A Sleepy Little Town: Free Fall
by neoxphile
Summary: Shortly after the events of "Memory House" an amazing and devastating secret bubbles to the surface of Mulder and Scully's lives.
1. Homestead of Ghosts

Title: A Sleepy Little Town: Free Fall  
Author: Neoxphile

Spoilers/Timeframe: post-IWTB

Disclaimer: The characters you recognize were created by Chris Carter. The rest are mine. Mine!

Series: A Sleepy Little Town:  
I. Staged Duplicity  
II. Recovering Gemini  
III. Christmas in (Haven) Maine  
IV. A Sleepy Little Town: Memory House  
V. A Sleepy Little Town: Free Fall

Summary: Shortly after the events of "Memory House" an amazing and devastating secret bubbles to the surface of Mulder and Scully's lives.

* * *

Ballyguest Historical Society

"Homestead of ghosts?" I asked, giving Hattie a look of undisguised horror.

"Yes, dear. They changed the official name back during the twenties, though there are documents with the new name on them as long ago as the late nineties." It took a moment to realize that she meant the 1890s, not the more recent nineties.

"Why?" I asked on autopilot. My thoughts were far more consumed with wondering why the place's name originally referred to ghosts than concerned that they changed the spelling.

"Oh, public relations, I'd imagine."

"Public relations?" I repeated blankly.

"Yes. That's probably why it was called Ballyghaist in the first place, but things fall out of fashion, and they didn't want to scare potential visitors away. Guest sounds much more inviting than the implication that the town is haunted."

"But they didn't worry about that to begin with?" I asked, vaguely aware that the baby had woken up while we spoke. "That hardly sounds like something that would have ever brought tourist dollars to town."

Her own expression was slightly abashed. "Ms. Scully, I don't know how much stock you put into the paranormal or supernatural yourself, but Ballyguest used to be known for it in certain circles."

I'm afraid that I stared off into the distance as I tried to process which she was saying. It didn't seem like the right time to tell Hattie that in our former lives Mulder and I had dealt almost exclusively in the paranormal and supernatural. Judith had already spent quite a lot of time telling people all about the version of us she knew of and the last thing that Mulder or I wanted was for our work history to become an issue for the boys at school.

Eventually I noticed that Hattie was giving me a concerned look. "Which certain circles?"

"Are you at all familiar with spiritualism?" she asked in a tone that suggested that she wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't.

"With séances, and faked ectoplasm, and supposed ghosts floating around people's heads?" I asked. It was hard not to sound skeptical. She probably thought I wasn't a believer. Mulder would've found that amusing.

"That's it exactly." The look she gave me was approving, and the fine network of lines around her eyes crinkled as she tried not to smile openly. "It hasn't been popular since the 20s, so I'm always surprised when I meet a young person who has any grasp on the concept."

Once again I was tempted to tell her that I wasn't young, but it seemed pointless. To a woman in her eighties, I _was_ young. "I've come across the concept. And there was that movie just last year."

"Haunting in Connecticut?" Hattie asked, leaving me surprised this time. The thought of woman her age watching horror movies just didn't gel in my brain.

"Yes. My husband and I went to see it last year, at his insistence. But I already knew something about spiritualism before then." It didn't seem worth mentioning that my first brush with the idea of mediums came in the form of Richard Peck books written when I was in my teens.

"Back during World War one Celia Maddox's great-grandmother was something of a local celebrity as a medium. There were many a séance held right here in Ballyguest."

"I suppose those séances were held in Memory House?" I asked, feeling more than little grumpy about the idea. You would have thought that it would have been worth a mention in their literature, considering that the inn famed itself on being able to connect people to their dead children dreams. Not that I myself had managed to have that pleasure.

Hattie shook her head. "No. Although Vicky's grandfather had been involved in spiritualism himself," she said, referring to the current innkeeper.

"Then where?" I hoped fervently that Hattie's next words would not be "in your house," because while that might have amused Mulder, I had no interest in learning that our new house was widely rumored to be haunted.

"Predominantly where Russell Carr's museum now stands; it used to be the Ballyguest Institute of Spirituality. Although, there were plenty of séances held in the north end of town, too, in private residences."

Unbidden, an image flooded my mind. A round wooden table, covered with a gaudy red cloth, surrounded by chairs. Each chair filled, people crowded together, shoulders practically touching. One person, an old woman, muttered to herself, and another, a man with a notebook, wrote down utterances that no one else could understand. Somewhere in the room, a hollow knocking sound.

Shaking my head to clear it, I found myself thinking that I was glad she didn't say the south end of town considering that's where our house was. It was probably irrational, considering I knew that virtually all of the results spirit medium shows were based on fraud and trickery, but I had seen too much to think that all of them were... As much as I would have liked to believe as strongly as I insisted that the ghosts that Mulder and I had seen in that house one Christmas Eve were fake, I had never been able to completely convince myself.

Hattie apparently mistook my silence as contemplative rather than dismay. "If you're really interested, I think there are some articles about the séances still. The Gazette could probably get you copies." Hattie tilted her head to the side. "You know young Max, don't you?"

I did indeed know young Max Kirby, and unlike me, he actually was very young. "I do-" I was spared from having to think of something nice to say about Max when Autumn began to fuss at last. "Oh, oh, what's wrong, sweetie?" I crooned, looking at my daughter rather than at Hattie.

Autumn was probably just bored because her fussing tapered off as soon as I pulled her out of her sling. Behind me Hattie chuckled. "Look at that hair! We can tell who this one takes after, can't we?"

That gave me pause. People often comment about Joey sharing my hair color too, and he was definitely much more cautious than William. Beyond noticing that, I hadn't really given much thought to which of our children would be more like Mulder or myself when they were grown. Frankly, I'd be quite content if they were not overly like either of us, because I've always thought the sum of our attributes were better than either of our own.

I suspected that Hattie had just been using the baby's outburst as a diversion, because the next thing she said was, "I'm sorry to have given you a shock, dear."

Although I looked up at her, I didn't say anything.

She sighed. "Not all newcomers take gladly to this town's illustrious past. I guess it must seem alien these days, ghosts, how can they compared to modern things like cell phones?"

Again I was gripped with the urge to explain what Mulder and I had done at the FBI, but I kept my tongue. Hattie didn't strike me as a gossip, but you never knew. Instead, I shook my head, as if I was trying to ward off something that bothered me. It wasn't much of a stretch because I actually was. "I'm okay."

For a woman in her eighties, Hattie had the brightest eyes. They bore into me for a moment before she looked away. "Good. Good."

There didn't seem to be anything left to say, at least nothing that seemed like a good idea to say, so I stuff the baby back in her sling and left. My exit would never be on a highlight reel for social etiquette, but I didn't know what else to do.

* * *

Mulder was fortunate that he wasn't home when I got there, because on the drive there I had decided that he must've known somehow. I wasn't sure how he might've figured it out, or how he had let me convince myself that moving to Ballyguest was my idea, but it didn't make sense to me that we could have moved to that town as a mere coincidence. One of us had to have known about the town's reputation, and it wasn't me.

His car wasn't in the driveway, but I found myself restlessly wandering into his office anyway. As I had suspected, he wasn't there. The only thing that greeted me was a pile of newspaper clippings, and a computer monitor that he had left on. On the screen I could see typing. At least he had been working on his manuscript. Still, I was annoyed that he had left the monitor turned on. It undermined our attempts to convince Joey and William not to waste electricity when we did so ourselves. Just in case, I hit save on his document before I turn the monitor off.

Autumn began to fuss in a way that told me that her issues were now more serious than mere boredom, so I brought her to her room. I was still in the middle of changing her when I heard Mulder open the front door.

"Scully?" His voice floated to me.

I didn't rush, knowing that I would end up with a crankier baby if I did. As soon as I put Autumn down, she fell asleep.

This time I found Mulder in his office. He was emptying a bag of copy paper and ink cartridges. "Hey," he said, glancing at me over his shoulder.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Did you know?"

"Did I know what?" he asked calmly. "You're going to have to narrow that down a little for me, Scully."

"About this town."

"Even narrower than that."

"Mulder, what's this town's original name?"

He gave me a blank look. "It hasn't always been Ballyguest?"

"No, no it hasn't," I practically growled.

Mulder gave me a wary look before sitting in his office chair. "What did it used to be?"

"Ballyghaist."

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that he would instantly understand the significance, but I admit that it did. Eying me warily, he just said "Wow."

"Wow," I repeated grimly.

"No, I had no idea. Though I suspect that you have an idea why it was called that, which must be why you're looking at me like I did something wrong."

Perhaps I should have protested that he hadn't done anything wrong, but I didn't feel like it. Not right then. "Apparently we have moved ourselves to what used to be renowned for being a center of spiritualism. Séances, ectoplasm, the whole nine yards."

"That's fascinating," Mulder blurted out. "I mean, how upsetting."

If he had tried to jolly me out of my bad mood, he would have failed. But his unfeigned reaction did the trick. Lying to me has never come easy to him, so it seemed rather unlikely that he had allowed the town's reputation to be the driving force behind moving us there. Occam's razor suggested that it really was just a strange coincidence. My mother would've said it is fate that drew us, but I really wasn't in the mood for giving her theories about predestination any consideration.

Sighing, I said, "At least that's all in the past."

"Until someone gets revivalism fever," Mulder joked. His face fell when I didn't smile. "That probably won't happen."

"I hope not." I really did. When we moved, I thought we were getting further from our past, but now... Eyeing him, I did recall that he'd been the first one to point the town out on the map. "If you didn't know about this place's illustrious past, how did you decide to look at houses here?"

He shrugged. "I looked online for houses that looked like they'd suit us, and realized that the name sounded vaguely familiar."

"Familiar how?" I demanded to know. It was hard not to feel suspicious all over again.

"It took me a bit to place it myself, but there was something in my mother's stuff about the town."

This surprised me I'll admit. "Teena came here?"

He nodded. "I didn't really put two and two together until Max Kirby began to hound you about that story..."

When he trailed off, I didn't need him to fill in any more blank spaces for me. His mother must have visited the town so she could stay at Memory House. The thought of Teena Mulder deciding that she'd like to see if she could dream about her lost child didn't seem to gel well with what I knew of the woman. That sort of silly desperation just didn't seem in character.

Then, almost as if reading my mind, Mulder added, "It was a very long time ago, Scully. She was a different woman back then."

"How long ago?"

"Just two or three years after my sister disappeared..." He looked down, frowning. "I guess it was around the time she stopped thinking that Samantha was still going to come home."

"Two or three years?" I repeated, puzzled. "But Samantha-"

"Hadn't died yet. I know. Guess Mom jumped the gun on that one, huh?"

I gave him a small, sympathetic smile. He was beyond needing to be cooed over whenever he thought of his sister or his mother, but I understood how he felt about things that could never be changed now. Thinking about things that had gone unresolved between Missy and our father certainly gave me a basis for comparison.

After a beat, I said, "So I guess we have your mom to blame for this, then."

He looked startled at first, but eventually smiled. "A gag gift from beyond the grave. And you didn't think my mother had a sense of humor."

I tried to return his smile, really I did, but it was hard not to think about ghosts, and how very glad I would always be if I never had anyone tell me that our home was haunted. I could luck out and avoid it forever, couldn't I?

* * *

When I woke up in the morning, I felt better. So what if someone had thought our town was haunted way back before the great depression? That was so far removed from the present that it was silly of me to have gotten worked up about it the day before.

Trying to act cheerful, so Mulder at least knew I was over my bad mood, I made breakfast and chatted with him and the kids until it was time for them to leave. For the heck of it, Mulder and I trailed after them with the baby in tow when they raced to the bus stop next door. They didn't seem to mind us waiting with them for once - it wasn't like we hovered over them like some kids who had parents with them every time the bus stopped.

As William and Joey boarded their bus I heard excitable little boys calling out to them, asking them to sit with them. Glancing at Mulder, it was obvious that he had heard them too. The doors slammed closed, keeping us from hearing anything else that might have been said, but I could still see them happily settling in seats with other kids.

"I wondered how soon they'd make friends," Mulder mused as we watched the bus drive down the road.

"I'm glad that it didn't take very long, I said, thinking about how they had been bound to be referred to as "the Mulder twins" since the first day of school on - we have met several parents, and that phrase had popped out of nearly all of their mouths. Neither their new classmates nor their classmates parents had no idea that our boys hadn't begun school as a twosome, and hadn't even known each other until their final month of kindergarten.

"You sound like it was really a concern," I remarked, looking up at my husband.

Mulder shrugged. "Little New England towns don't exactly have a reputation for being welcoming to newcomers."

"You've read too much Stephen King." I pushed his shoulder lightly. "Besides, Ballyguest is different." I said, thinking of Hattie's revelation.

"Maybe you're right."

"Maybe?" I teased. "When am I not?"

"I seem to recall spending a night looking for tanker trucks..."

Shrugging my shoulders and looking down at Autumn, I said, "And look where that got us."

"Touché."


	2. Disturbance at Daniel's

There was an unusually amount of noise coming from Daniel's house next door on Saturday. He was generally so quiet that it was hard to keep track of when he was actually home and not away on frequent business trips, so I was shocked. From talking to him a few times about what it was like to be in the sales of medical devices, I got the sense that it was a job he'd picked because he liked the salary, not the work. I didn't blame him, I was a doctor myself and I could hardly work up any enthusaism for tools I might actually use, let alone be in his position of just selling the things.

"Who is next door?" Joey asked me as he bound into the room a minute after I noticed the noise. The fact that he had his coat in his hands suggested that he was about to ask if he and William could go out and play.

"I think Daniel has company," I said, and we both walked to the window. I didn't like being the noisy neighbors, but the racket was getting quite loud. Considering the noise I more than half expected that he had some guys over for a sporting event, something that made me think wistfully of the late gunmen, but there weren't any overly enthusatic drinkers/sports enthusatists in his yard. Instead there was a small boy having a complete meltdown.

"Wow," Joey commented, making me give him a sidelong look. His transition into our household hadn't been the smoothest, but at least I could say that he never caused me public embarassment like the little blond boy throwing a fit in Daniel's driveway was. And the fact that Daniel was being embarassed wasn't conjecture, I could see him standing a few feet from the boy, looking like he was in utter dispair over the child's behavior.

A woman, I had to assume his ex-wife from her equally pained looks, was apparently trying to cajol the boy into behaving. And an older boy looked like he wished that the earth would split open and swallow his brother whole. It was hard not to blame him...

"Hey," I said, getting an idea. "Why don't you get William and go ask him to play with you both?" I asked Joey.

He gave me a look like I was insane. "Un uh, he just kicked his dad!"

Putting a hand on my son's shoulder, I shook my head. "Not that him. That him," I said, pointing at the older boy. I figured he was around ten, and the one throwing a fit six or seven. "He looks like he wishes he was anywhere else, don't he?"

"He does," Joey said with a frown. "Maybe he wants to go sledding."

"He might."

"Will!" Joey bellowed, racing up the stairs towards their bedrooms.

I shook my head. Mulder and I had pretty much given up trying to tame our sons' enthusaism for rapid travel. The house and its five bedrooms, hardly seemed big enough to contain all of their energy some days... Mothers of older boys said that it would eventually level off, but they hadn't seen my husband scaling a tree in his thirties, so I didn't think they knew what they were talking about, even if they meant well.

William and Joey must have went out the back door because I didn't see them leave: they just suddenly appeared in Daniel's yard. William, the less shy by far, took the lead, saying something to the older of the two boys. After a moment of conversation and some shrugging, my boys and one of Daniel's ran off, leaving the couple to deal with the younger boy who had still not stopped yelling.

"Is someone killing a lion next door?" Mulder asked behind me. When I turned I found him with Autumn in his arms and a burping cloth over one shoulder, grinning at his own joke. He'd brought several of the bunny print cloths like the one decorating his shoulder when he realized he was more sentemental about some of his clothes than he thought, and not just his Knicks jersey.

"Looks like it must be Daniel's weekend with his sons," I commented. "Joey and William rescued his older boy from that. I think they're sledding in the backyard."

"I'll check," Mulder told me, passing me both our daughter and the burping cloth.

Unable to tear my eyes away from the spectical next-door, I felt like a vouyer when Daniel finally tired of the caterwhauling, and picked the little boy up. The noise level dropped to a dull roar after Daniel's ex slammed the door behind them.

It sort of made me wonder what kind of woman she was, and my initial impression was fairly positive given she hadn't done anything to indicate that she was making the problem worse. The sad thing was that the temper tantrum might not have anything much to do with either parent, though I'm sure neither of them was feeling overly confident in their parenting skills after all of that.

"Yup, they're having a grand ole time in the backyard," Mulder confirmed a minute later.

"Good. Too bad the same can't be said of Daniel."

"There are worse Daniels to have for neighbors," he said unexpectedly. I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking if he had my ex in mind. Probably. He told me once about taking different paths, and I couldn't help but wonder if William and Joey might have ended up Daniel's if I'd been weak enough to take Daniel back. It wasn't a comfortable thought.

A knock on the door about an hour later hardly came as a surprise, nor did Daniel standing there once I opened it. He looked sheepish, and asked "is it Declan still here?"

As he asked that, I realized that I didn't actually know his sons names. I really didn't see much of Daniel, and his sons had only come up occasionally. I of course hadn't pressed him on that subject because I knew that he missed them, and didn't want him to feel badly about that.

"Boy around nine or ten, dark blonde hair?" I asked, hoping that a joking tone would make him less uncomfortable.

"That's the one," Daniel replied. He looked like he was a little more at ease. "Thank you for rescuing him from Rhys's outburst." I wanted to protest that I hadn't done anything, but I guess it was a little obvious that William and Joey had been given some encouragement.

Declan and Rhys, I thought. And some people thought Autumn was an unusual choice. I wondered who was a fan of European names, though I had to admit I didn't know Daniel will enough to even hazard a guess about that.

"No problem," I said, when I realized I hadn't actually answered him.

Daniel's face began to turn the little red. "Rhys isn't taking the divorce very well," he muttered.

Looking up at him, I asked, "how long ago did you and your ex separate?" I had met Daniel in January, and his divorce seemed to have already been finalized by the then.

Daniel shrugged and said, "December."

"December," I repeated. In December Daniel had been in Florida helping his elderly mother move into her retirement complex and it made me wonder if his mother had driven a wedge between him and his wife. That would have been pretty sad, but it wasn't unheard of. Not when so many people for taking care of both their elderly parents and their own children the same time. The ex and his sons had already been gone by the time we'd moved in back in November, so maybe it had been something else.

"I feel like the worst parent in the world when I think about that," Daniel confided with a grimace. "Can you think of a worse Christmas gift for your children?"

I actually could, and tried to push away the unbidden image of somebody hanging themselves near the Christmas tree. I didn't say that of course. "I'm sorry," I said instead. There really wasn't anything I could say that would make him feel better, so I didn't even try to.

Our conversation came to a natural close when the boys came trooping around the house and appeared behind Daniel. When I smiled, Daniel turned and looked at his oldest son. "Declan. Rhys is in the house, and he's calmed down now a little," Daniel told him, and Declan gave a long-suffering shrug.

This made me raise my eyebrows a little bit. From Declan's expression it was fairly obvious that his little brother wasn't behaving much better for their mother than he had just now for their father. That had to be rough, not that I would know personally; my father never would've put up with behavior like that. He would have sent anyone of us to military school first.

"Come on," Daniel told him. "We're going to order some pizza from Papa John's."

Declan made a face. "Can't we have Pizza Hut instead? It's a lot better."

Before Daniel could even open his mouth, I was sure what his response would be, and I wasn't disappointed. "The promise of Papa John's is the only thing that kept him from opening his mouth and yelling again," Daniel said, his expression saying that there was no room for argument.

Declan just looked resigned. "Okay. Maybe we can get Pizza Hut next time."

I wouldn't bet on it, I thought. Not the way your dad looks like now, he thinks that your little brother is always going to be in need of appeasement. Maybe the next visit. Of course, I said nothing.

Instead, after Daniel and his son left, I turned my own sons. "Did you have fun?"

William nodded. "He seems nice. Really quiet though."

Trying not to look askance at Joey, I asked "how quiet?" I knew that William considered his own brother to be abnormally quiet, so the fact that he thought it was worth mentioning that Declan was quiet made me wonder.

"Pretty quiet," Joey said.

If even Joey thought that he was quiet… I gave my head small shake, and told myself that it wasn't really my problem to fix. Some kids were shy. Still, I was tempted to ask Mulder to talk to the boy at least once during their visit. Sometimes being a former hotshot profiler was handy for him when he came to dealing with children too.

"Do you think you'll invite him over to sled again sometime this weekend?" I asked, finally shutting the door. Daniel and his kid had already returned to their house, so by that point we were just letting in cold air.

"Sure, if that's okay?" Joey asked.

I tried not to cringe. There is nothing like musing over the baggage of other people's children to remind you that yours have their own. I had never even met Mrs. Van de Kamp, and had only met Jonathan once, but I would have liked to ask them what they had done to Joey to make him so nervous about proper decorum. I sensed, perhaps unfairly, that they had put the Captain to shame when it came to strict parenting.

"Oh, that would be fine," I said as lightly as possible. "As long as you let Dad or me know that you're going out to play and who you're playing with you know it's okay as long as we don't have other plans… But don't forget that Declan's dad needs to know where you are going too."

"Yeah," William butted in. "How often do Mom and Dad say no?"

"They said we couldn't get Mr. Pike-" Joey said, referring to their pet fish who lived in the dining room, "-a 100 gallon aquarium."

This made his brother roll his eyes. "I meant about playing outside with other kids."

"Oh."

"'sides, the dinning room isn't big enough for an aquarium that big," William pointed out.

Joey sighed. "I know, but imagine how big he'd get if we could put him in a tank that big. I want to know if fish really grow as big as their tank will let them."

"But Mr. Pike is a grown up. Do grown up fishes still grow?"

They both looked at me expectantly at this point. I made a shooing motion. "You both know how to look on wikipedia," I reminded them. "Go find out."

"Okay, yeah," William agreed before grabbing his brother by the arm when Joey was too slow to suit him.

I made a mental note to ask Mulder how long he thought we should keep the net-nanny software on the computer the boys were allowed to use. It was pretty good at keeping them from accessing questionable sites, but it always made me miss the Gunmen when I thought of it. Not that they would ever have deigned to make some real money by authoring software that actually had a market value. Oh no, they'd always had too much integrity for that, even with empty bank accounts to show for it. You had to grudgingly admire people with principles that strong, even when you worried about the sanity of strictly adhering to them.

* * *

An impatient little beeping outside alerted me that the mail truck was in the driveway the next afternoon. After decades in the city I was still trying to get used to having packages show up right at your door with the expectation you'd be there to take them or not mind them being left on the front stoop. A stiff breeze slapped me across the face as soon as I stepped outside wishing I'd grabbed my coat.

"H-hi," I said through chattering teeth as soon as I reached the mailman, who had already gotten out of his truck. Apparently I hadn't gotten there soon enough to suit him so he'd been preparing to abandon the package.

Instead of returning my greeting the mailman just thrust the box at me with a curt "here."

I didn't bother trying to say goodbye as he stomped back to his truck, leaving behind a trail of dirty footprints in the snow. Sighing, I hugged the package to my chest and hurried back inside.

"Mulder, I think our mailman hates us," I complained the second I saw him. He raised an eyebrow and watched me put the package down so I could pull on a fleece top. L.L. Bean was rapidly becoming my favorite source for winterwear.

"Why?" Mulder eventually asked, looking moderately amused.

"Hmm?" I asked, toying with the idea of starting a fire to rid myself of my chill when the fleece didn't cut it. We had plenty of wood but I still couldn't tell if the kids were screwing with me by begging the toast marshmallows every single time we lit a fire. Looking at Mulder I asked, "why do I suspect he hates us, or what do I think accounts for it?"

He shrugged. "Lady's choice."

"I think he resents all the packages has to bring us."

"So it's your mom's fault."

"I wouldn't say that!" I replied, automatically defending her.

Mulder gave me a skeptical look and gestured towards the box. "Who's that from?"

It was hard not to cringe. "Mulder… She's just so excited to finally have a granddaughter."

His expression finally softened. "With every other Scully grandchild being a boy, no wonder."

"Yeah," I agreed, thinking of Bill and Charlie's sons.

He handed me a pair of scissors and I used them to cut the tape holding the box's flaps closed. I shifted a layer of tissue paper to discover a pair of gift cards labeled with William and Joey's names and an exquisite green dress with a matching bonnet. Looking over my shoulder, Mulder said, "Well, no one is ever going to accuse Maggie of not having good taste. But is this a hint about getting more pictures done?"

"Maybe. She's expressed wanting us to do them every three months."

"I hope she doesn't expect the boys to use those gift cards on clothes. They wouldn't be very happy. "

"Doubt she does…" I thought of the mail carrier's attitude again. "But the mailman-"

Mulder shook his head firmly. "If he can't deal with one of his job duties, may be a career with the post office isn't a good fit."

This did give me pause. There were parts of almost any job but didn't thrill you - investigating fertilizer came to mind - but you sucked it up and did it anyway. I still wasn't happy that the mailman so openly resented delivering packages, but Mulder was right. Either he learned to cope with what the job required or he looked for something that suited him better. I resolved on the spot to not let it bother me so much. "You're right."

"Scully! You say the sweetest things."

"Down boy," I retorted with a smirk.

Our banter died an early death when the phone in my pocket rang.

"Probably your mom checking to make sure the mail carrier didn't huck it into a snow bank," he quipped but I waved him off when I saw the number.

"Hello? Dana Scully speaking," I said in my most professional tone… While ignoring the faces my husband was making. I ducked into the dining room in self-defense.

"Doctor Scully, this is Charles Whitcomb. Is now a convenient time to talk?"

"Yes, of course," I said instantly. The man was my new employer, so I wasn't about to blow off his call because I'd rather continue to flirt with Mulder.

"Excellent. I'll actually be quite brief. I was hoping to schedule an in-person meeting with you in the near future."

To my frustration, Charles never said what the meeting we'd scheduled for the following week was to be about. I guessed I'd find out then.

* * *

"What are you watching?" a voice over my shoulder asked Wednesday afternoon. It was Mulder, of course. The boys still couldn't look over my shoulder, yet, though they kept telling me that they'd be taller than me one day. Like I didn't know that.

I waved my hand towards the screen. "A Morgan video."

"Ah." Mulder was almost as used to seeing video of Duke Crocker's orange cat as I was. Duke was a nice boy, but had strange ideas about the best way to keep in touch. His friend Audrey Parker wrote actual e-mails, but Duke usually just sent videos of what his cat was up to or updated brochures for his hotel, like anyone who got stranded there was in a hurry to go back. I wondered if he was in touch with the Greens, too... Fortunately, Morgan was pretty cute so I didn't mind. Somehow neither did anyone else: there were videos of Morgan with thousands of hits on Youtube too. "Can I tear you away from that?"

"Of course," I told him, pausing the video so that Morgan Crocker hung in mid-air, front paws inches from a red dot someone - I think Audrey given the smallness of the hand - was projecting on a wall for him. "What's up?"

"I found this writer's workshop I'd like to attend in Dover," Mulder said, handing me a flyer. There was a stamp on the back from the library, so I didn't have to ask where he'd found out about it. Mulder and Autumn took frequent trips to the library, not that she was even old enough to understand that the pictures in the books he read her represented anything. She would in a few months, though, so it was good to acclimate her to the reading process before then. "I've already checked that they're still taking registrations."

"That sounds like a good idea," I told him. Though I had no idea how much he'd actually get out of it, I thought it was a good idea simply because the workshop was bound to leave him enthused about his project. I didn't have a specific deadline for the completion of his book in mind, but I had the distinct impression that he didn't either. Maybe attending a workshop with other writers would help him formulate a timetable for it.

"The only problem is that it's the same day as your meeting with the hospital, so I guess I'll be bringing the squirt with me."

"Mulder, please don't call her that." I sighed.

"Why?" he asked, looking at me like he couldn't fathom my objection.

I waved a hand. "It's vulgar."

"What do you-" He shut his mouth in mid-sentence, obviously having put two and two together. Giving me a wry smile, he said, "Now that I think about it, that is kind of vulgar."

"Yeah. But anyway, are you sure you want to bring a baby with you?" What I wanted to ask was, aren't you supposed to be paying attention during the workshop? But I already knew that he'd just tell me that he was good at multi-tasking. He was, but no one was that good.

"Absolutely."

"Um, okay." It was his event. I wasn't going to stand in his way if he wanted to make things more difficult for himself. Honestly, I think he enjoys challenging himself now and then. It's not like I don't myself.

"I'm sure I won't be the only parent there, there's this photo here with some toddlers in it." He pointed at a tiny picture, and when I squinted, I could just barely make out a couple of babies crawling on the floor. It was hard to be sure given the size of the photo, but it seemed to me like there were a couple of adults who looked frustrated too. Made me wonder if they were the kids' parents, or people annoyed that there were small distractions exploring the room.

"Maybe she'll sleep through a lot of it," I suggested. With a few bottles of expressed milk going with him, it was possible he'd have a full, sleepy baby on his hands for most of the day. Of course, babies seemed to have a sixth sense about when you wanted them to sleep, and then fought sleep with every fiber of their beings.

"I'm sure she will," he said confidently.

I winced, sure that he'd just cursed himself.


	3. News

A few days later our plans hit a snag when we realized that neither of us would be home when the boys got out of school the day of Mulder's workshop and my meeting. Mulder looked irritated but he said, "I'll cut it short."

"I don't want you to have to do that," I protested, knowing how important it was to him.

"Scully, it's not like you can blow off a meeting with your new boss. It has to be me. Don't worry about it."

He looked so resigned and disappointed that I just had to wrack my brain to come up with a solution. "Leigh!" I blurted out the second I thought of it.

He gave me a curious look. "Their teacher's wife?"

"Yes. She baby-sits. She's the one Judith introduced me to right after Autumn was born."

"Oh." After a moment of surprise he seemed to warm to the idea. "We should see if she's free. It'd only be until six, I'm sure I'd get home by then."

"Right," I muttered. Simply assuming she'd do it probably wasn't smart. "I'll need to ask Judith for her number."

His response was to make a shooing motion, clearly indicating he thought I should go right then and there. He even had the nerve to chuckle when I rolled my eyes at this. Sometimes it's hard to believe I put up with that man.

Fortunately, Judith didn't mind giving me the number and Leigh was home when I called.  
"Hi, this is Dana Scully, Judith's neighbor?" I hated that it sounded like a question, but I was worried that she wouldn't remember me by name alone. "I hate to ask at the last minute, but Fox and I are looking for someone to watch our boys on Wednesday from 3 to 6."

"Oh, sure, I'm available," she said much to my relief. "I should swing by your house to meet the bus, right?"

'"If you can, that will be great."

"No problem." she paused for a moment. "You don't need someone to watch the baby?"

"No. Fox is taking her with him." I had serious doubts that he'd find the writer's workshop as much fun with a baby as he thought, but he insisted that other people were bringing babies and toddlers too. That sounded noisy and unproductive to me, but no one asked my opinion. "He's attending a writer's workshop that's supposed to be baby-friendly," I explained.

"Oh." The single word's tone conveyed almost as much doubt as I felt myself. "I'm certified in infant CPR if you ever need a sitter for all three of them sometime."

Smiling wryly, I said, "Be careful. We might just take you upon it in the future."

She gave a youthful burst of laughter before saying, "I'm sure I wouldn't regret the offer."

Thinking that the kids tended towards over enthusiasm rather than actually being naughty, I really hoped so. "I think as a parent I'm contractually obliged to say that."

Leigh laughed again. "Oh, I've said if myself," she said, reminding me that she had a boisterous little boy of her own.

"Thanks again, Leigh."

"No problem. I'm sure it will be fun."

After I hung up I made a mental note to ask Judith Leigh's going rate. I'd pay her double for helping us out of a jam. If she refused, I'd insist she use take the extra money to buy something fun for the kids she sat for.

* * *

I think that Mulder enjoyed the fact that Ballyguest is in the middle of nowhere, like so many of the small towns we investigated while we were at the FBI, but I didn't really like that myself. It would have been nice if going to the grocery store didn't require driving ten miles in each direction: there was something really terrible about getting home from one of those shopping excursions only to discover that you'd left something behind and knowing that you'd have to waste all that time and gas over again in order to go back for whatever it was. That must be why Judith seemed overly prepared for such trips to me at first, back before I realized just how very spoiled I'd been when we'd lived in cities. Even Carter, Virginia seemed like a mecca in comparison to our far flung home now.

As for me, I was desperately trying to find something to buy to wear for my meeting with Charles. Mulder hadn't said anything about how I was finding it more difficult to lose the last fifteen pounds I'd gained while pregnant this time than I had after William's birth, but I felt critical enough about it for both of us. Most days I was too busy to pay much attention to that chiding little voice that attempted to scold me for every cookie eaten and every workout that got canceled because something more pressing came up, but alone with my thoughts as I drove for miles going from one store to another and failed to find something fitting… All I really wanted to do was to go home, but I didn't have anything dressy that fit. My old interview type clothes were too tight by a lot, and the one I'd used for the interview - even if I was willing to take the chance that he wouldn't have remembered what I'd worn - was now too big because I'd been late in my second trimester when I'd landed the job.

As I struggled with yet another set of buttons, I finally admitted to myself that the biggest reason I was having a fashion crisis was probably because I wasn't looking forward to leaving my baby all day, and the meeting with my new employer just served to remind me that it was going to happen in just a couple more weeks.

Don't get me wrong, as I've watched Mulder interact with Autumn since December, I'd grown confident that she was going to be in her father's very capable hands when I wasn't around. It was great that he'd turned out to be as much a natural with tiny infants as he'd proven himself to be with first a toddler then small children, but a big part of me just wanted to be there myself too. As much as I'd promised myself that things were going to be different with my last baby, I couldn't help but think about how it had been just me taking care of first William, then Joey for a while, and not wanting to have less control over things. Of course I'd never say anything about it to Mulder because there was no way to say it that wouldn't sound selfish.

Eventually, after about four hours of trying on things I hated, I found something I only mildly disliked and headed home.

* * *

The boys are usually so well behaved (or at least since the first few months after getting Joey back) that it always throws me when they act up. Especially when it feels deliberate. I'd almost swear that they'd conspired against me the night before my meeting with the medical director, making a pact to fray my last nerve. maybe they were reacting to the reminder that I'd soon be returning to work after so many weeks home with their sister...

It was hard to be sympathetic to that when William outright refused to even try the side-dish I'd made to go with dinner, Joey whined through doing homework and they both complained bitterly when Mulder refused to let them play outside after dark. The straw that broke the camel's back, however was the issue of their bathroom.

"Can we watch TV now?" William asked in a long suffering tone while I oversaw the kids putting their plates in the dishwasher. This alone had me gritting my teeth because he had no idea that the only reason he wasn't still sitting at the table while his side dish grew cold was because I'd remembered a night when Charlie had sat in front of a plate of meatloaf until after my parents had gone to bed.

"No," I said firmly. The eye-rolling that came next didn't improve my mood.

"Why not?"

"Because I want your bathroom clean before you go to bed."

At this, Joey jumped into the conversation. "But Mom!"

Shaking my head, I just shot back, "No buts."

William put his hands on his hips. "Why do we have to wash the floor and the walls? That's hard. We hate that."

"Yeah," Joey agreed with a vigorous nod of his head. "They don't even get dirty."

I hate to admit it, but I kind of just snapped after that. First I stormed out the room and went to grab something left over from Halloween, which I stuffed under my arm. Then I went back to the kitchen, grabbed each of my sons by a forearm, and frog-marched them to the bathroom, studiously ignoring their alarmed looks.

Once we were in the room, I let them go and they were so stunned that neither of them tried to make a break for it. This allowed me to reach behind us to turn off the overhead light, and snap on the portable black light that I'd retrieved.

As I swung the light in an arch around the toilet and the adjacent walls, small spots began to glow.

"What's that?" William asked, obviously surprised that the bathroom floor and walls resembled a Dalmatian's coat under the black light.

"Guess," I told him flatly.

"Water?" he ventured, sounding uncertain.

I picked reached over and turned on the sink. We all watched when the water came out and didn't glow. "Not water."

"Pee?" Joey whispered.

"Exactly," I declared. I turned the light on, put the black light down, and gave them the mop and a magic eraser. "I'll leave the black light here so you can check to make sure you got it all."

"Okay…" they groaned.

I wasn't exactly thrilled to have won the victory, but as I walked away I felt a little less guilty when I heard William say, "That's gross. But kinda cool." Joey murmured an agreement, and I heard the mop bucket being filled.

It could have ended worse, I decided with a shrug.

* * *

Maybe Mulder talked to the boys or maybe they just got over their grumpiness, but either way they were less bearish by their late breakfast: I'd been steeling myself for them to whine and demand to know why Daniel's boys didn't have to go to school and they did, and had already prepared an explanation of how different states had different vacation schedules.

It was a good thing they were behaving too considering how nervous I was about my meeting. Perhaps a doubly good thing considering the weather had prompted a two hour delay of school, meaning that the kids were still hanging around the house considerably later than I had anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind their company most of the time, but when I needed to get ready for a major meeting was what I hope is an understandable exception.

"Hey," Mulder said to the kids, a quart of milk in one hand, and a stack of diapers in the other; I had to assume that he believed that having breakfast and packing a diaper bag could be multitask. "Do I have your attention?" Both of our sons nodded and put their cereal spoons down. "Don't forget the Mr. Blackwood's wife Leigh is going to pick you up at the bus stop today. So don't walk back to the house-" we lived all a 10th of a mile from their bus stop. "And don't be scared that there's strange car there. Mom said it silver."

"Dad!" William groaned. "Were not babies. We wouldn't be scare of _a car_."

"I know you think you're practically grown up-"

"Were almost nine!" our son immediately protested.

"Not until May," Mulder grumbled. "And it's my job to worry about you!"

"You're good at it."

"Thanks." This was said with a roll of Mulder's eyes.

"Welcome."

Apparently bored of the minor squabbling between his father and brother, Joey squirmed restlessly in his seat until William went back to picking at his toast. "Dad, is today your writers' play date?" Joey finally asked.

"It's not a play date, it's a workshop."

"Oh." Joey looked confused. "What's the difference?"

"Um…" Mulder was obviously at a loss, but he thought of one difference. Sort of. "If we want snacks, we have to buy our own."

"Right." Joey looked up at me. "Good luck, Mom."

"Yeah, good luck," William echoed.

Then they were both out the door.

Mulder scowled, but not a me. "So, what about you?"

"What about me what?"

"Our kids think today has all the gravity of a play group, like Gymboree." Mulder had brought William a toddler far more often than I had had been able to stand to.

I shrugged. "Kids have limited worldview."

To my surprise he lifted his eyebrows, and one corner of his mouth twitch. "I'm afraid those sound like weasel words, Scully."

"Do not!" I protested. "That be more like musk. Or bendable."

"Cute."

Forcing myself to be more serious I kissed his cheek and told him, "what you are going to get out of it is going to largely depend on what you put into it. If you just go to socialize, it's not going to be very valuable from a writing point of view," I added, thinking that being able to talk to other grown-ups had an intrinsic worth all of its own. "But if you go there ready to learn, you could stand to gain quite a bit."

"That sounds like pretty sage advice," he murmured, leaning down to kiss me.

"Is it?" I glanced at the baby monitor on the table, waiting for Autumn to wake up and cry. For once she didn't.

"Oh yeah," he said distractedly. Most of his attention was on kissing me, although his hands were up under my pajama's top by that point. "The sort of valuable advice that could get a girl lucky, if she wanted to." He pulled away for a moment, disappointing me. I realized that he'd been looking for the clock only when he said, "and if she has time to."

Nerves that had me out of bed hours before technically needed to be, so I had plenty of time left to shower and dress… And other things. "Mulder, I have to take a shower," I said firmly.

"Oh." Now he was one that looked disappointed.

"I didn't say I had to take alone," I told him.

"Oh!"

Mulder dashed out of the hour forty-five minutes later, and I only found out that evening that he'd reached the workshop only five minutes before check-in closed. However, he told me that the stress had been worth it.

* * *

It seemed half a miracle that I managed to locate the director's office without turning myself around and going the wrong way even once. I hadn't been there for months, and it shocked me more than little that I still remembered where the interview had taken place. This meant, of course, had the meeting taken place anywhere else, I would've been screwed.

As it was, I was still so nervous that I was barely able to return the smile that a perky receptionist gave me as soon as she saw me. "You must be Dr. Scully. Dr. Whitcomb will join you in just a moment. Would you like something to drink?"

I must've been very nervous, because I nearly blurted out that drinking anything at that point would just make me need to pee, but I managed to clamp down on my tongue before those words betrayed me. I hardly paid any attention when she spoke to me as she abandoned me in the conference room. Instead, I was telling myself very sternly that I needed to keep my crap together.

Charles Whitcomb came into the room looking no less anxious than I did. I didn't take that as a good sign, and I was confused about whether or not I should stand when he entered the room. Eventually I decided not to. He gave me the briefest of smiles and sat down across from me. "Thank you for joining me today, Dr. Scully."

"You're welcome," I said, hoping that my voice didn't tremble and give me away. Nothing good could be coming with him being this out of sorts too.

The director looked slightly uncomfortable. "I suppose I should get to the reason I asked you to come in today." I nodded slightly, which did nothing to remove that look from his face. "I hate to admit that the remodeling in what will be your department is taking longer than we were promised by the contactors. As much as I'd love to have you begin on the date we agreed upon, I'm afraid that we won't have any place to put you."

It was hard not to frown in response to this. I really didn't like the sound of this, was this the beginning of telling me that the job no longer existed? Mulder and I could get by on our savings for a while, but I didn't relish the thought of what could be a protracted job search considering the state of the economy.

He steepled his hands and leaned forward. "I've already cleared this with the board, Dr. Scully…What we want to do is put you on hold for three more months."

"On hold?" I asked warily, not especially liking the sound of that either. Being without an income for three months was better than being out of a job altogether, but it didn't really strike me as fair. What was that saying my dad always repeated? A lack of planning on your part isn't an emergency on mine. How I wish that was a universal truth.

Maybe some of what I was thinking showed on my face, because he couldn't get his next words out fast enough. "We'll pay your salary during those three months, of course."

"Of course," I echoed, as if I'd been thinking that he would all along. I didn't expect him to believe me. _I_ didn't believe me.

It was hard to keep a straight face when I thought about the tantalizing possibility of being able to stay home with my baby twice as long as I thought I was going to get to. I'd agreed to begin working at the center next month because that was a condition of employment, not because I was eager to go back to working. Though my lingering guilt over what had happened when Joey was an infant was greater, I still felt bad that I allowed John and Monica talk me into returning to work insanely soon after William was born too. I didn't blame them because I really was there only viable option at the time, but if I'd been a better mother, I might have told them no anyway, and just spent some time on the phone looking for someone else to help. It probably wasn't healthy to consider Autumn's infancy as a chance to finally do things the right way, but I couldn't help feeling it.

Whitcomb of course completely misinterpreted my quietness. "I can't apologize enough for this incontinence-" he fretted, at least until I took pity on him and cut him off.

"I understand that things like this are outside your control," I told him, watching some of the apprehension slide off his face. "It's all right. I'd be happy to postpone my start date until June."

He immediately looked guilty again. "June at the earliest, I'm sorry to admit."

"Well, as long as you keep me abreast of things," _and pay me_, I silently added, "I don't have a problem with that."

"I'm sure your family will be pleased at least," he said desperately. I hadn't mentioned having a family in the interview, but it was common practice to vet people by doing an internet search so he'd probably found references online, if only though Max Kirby's article about Memory House. The idea that he might know about Emily didn't delight me, though.

All I did was a nod. "Yes, to be sure."

He stood abruptly, making me scrambled my feet too. Then he took my hand, shaking it heartily. "Well then, I will keep you informed to the best of my ability. And I hope to see you at the beginning of the summer."

I shook his hand back, remembering distantly that my father had once advised me that even women need a strong handshake. Nobody likes handling a dead fish. "Yes. Until then."

As we left the conference room, I'm not sure who felt a greater sense of relief to have the meeting over with. I hoped it was me. Otherwise, the director was going to be a very nervous man to work for.

* * *

I stopped at a bakery on the way home and bought a chocolate cake with butter cream frosting. Maybe it was silly, but I was in a celebratory mood. Mulder seemed confused when I told them this over the phone. About the cake, I mean, not about feeling like celebrating.

"Comfort food?" he asked carefully.

Blinking, I realized that I had told him more about dessert in my meeting. "No." Maybe it was a conversation best left until we could talk in person.

"Right." After a pause he asked, "are you going to make me wait until we get home to tell me what your meeting was about?"

I never did believe that Mulder had temporarily gained the ability to read minds back when he had come in contact with that etching but once in a while he displayed an uncanny ability to ferret out my thoughts. Still elated, I playfully agreed. "Yup."

"Okay then," he sounded at least as amused as confused.

"We, before you hang up, how's our girl?"

"Sound asleep. She must find this workshop deadly boring because she's been asleep most of the day. Autumn's going to keep us up all night I'm afraid."

Fine by me, I thought giddily. I knew they were women who were thoroughly sick of being cocooned with the newborn by the six-week mark, but I guess I'm not built that way… At least not when I don't have as much angst on my plate as one Mulder went into hiding. "I guess we'll have to take that when it comes."

"That's a nice attitude," he said, sounding a little skeptical. "Hopefully you'll still have it at 3 AM."

"Thanks," I snorted. "I won't keep you any longer. I'm sure you have important conversations to get back to."

"Love you, bye."

"Love you too."

A few minutes later I found myself humming as I carried everything I'd bought out to my car. I almost put it all in the backseat, then envisioned my curious sons going through the bags, and stowed it all in the trunk instead.

* * *

The Blackwood home was nice, if modest. A passing thought as I walked to the front door made me wonder if one set of parents or the other had helped out with a down payment because our property tax bill suggested that Leigh's husband wasn't overpaid, and she didn't work fulltime. I reminded myself that I was being nosey, and knocked on the door. It didn't take long before it was answered. "Hi, hope they weren't any trouble."

"Nope, no trouble at all. Come on in," Leigh told me as she held the door open. "It's too chilly to wait out here for them."

"Thanks," I replied, following her in. The inside of the home matched the outside. I wondered where the nearest IKEA was because the living room furniture was stuff I recognized from their catalogue. It was nice, if a bit too modern for my tastes. I smiled when I noticed a play area for Leigh's son blocked off with baby gates - Mulder and I were considering something similar once Autumn was walking, but we weren't ordering from Smith's pet supply catalogue no matter how hard he tried to convince me that it'd be practical. She was a baby, not a Boston terrier.

"Why don't you take a seat there." Leigh pointed at an armchair. "And I'll make sure they get their boots and coats on."

If they need to put their boots on, I guess they'd made themselves comfortable. Hopefully Leigh didn't mind kids running around in socked feet. I didn't, but as the mother of two eight-year-olds I was used them leaving a breadcrumb trail of discarded clothing and other belongings in their wake.

Leigh had only been gone a minute when a small voice said "Hi" at knee level. Leaning over, I found myself looking into a pair of ocean blue eyes, very much like Leigh's. Jacoby raised his arms above his head and asked "Up?"

"Okay," I agreed, but I more than half expected him to change his mind. To my surprise he just settled happily onto my lap. The other thing that surprised me was that I couldn't feel the expected bulk of a diaper under his clothes, so that must have meant he was already potty-trained despite being two and a half. William had resisted the potty until a couple of weeks past his third birthday, and there wasn't really anyone I could ask about Joey. Maybe I'd luck out and get Autumn out of diapers sooner than I had William - Jacoby was proof it was possible.

"Name?" Jacoby asked, fingers reaching for my cross until I slipped it under my shirt. He looked disappointed but didn't whine about being denied his goal.

"My name is Dana."

"Oh." A man of few words, that Jacoby.

My eyes roamed the immediate vicinity, and I spotted a basket of picture books on the floor, within arm's reach. I was just about to ask Jacoby if he wanted to look at one when Leigh came back. She looked a little surprised to see her son sitting on my lap, and I felt a rush of embarrassment. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that picking him up was okay. Some parents didn't like that sort of thing. "Sorry," I told her. "He asked me to pick him up and I didn't think to ask-"

Leigh shook her head. "No, it's okay. I'm just a bit shocked that he wanted you to. He doesn't usually warm to people very quickly, and he's only seen you a couple of times before. There must be something about you he likes," she concluded with a smile that promised that she wasn't upset.

I thought back to another baby I'd held, back when I'd thought I'd never hold one of my own in my arms. That baby had taken to me too. "It's a gift," I said seriously, though I ruined it by smiling.

She looked amused, which had been my goal. "Have you ever worked with kids?"

That was a loaded question, though she had no way of knowing it. Mulder and I had interacted with several children over the course of our time with the FBI, and those were the sort of cases that could break your heart more often than not. It wasn't the time or the place to bring up that, though, so I just shrugged a little. "When I worked at the hospital a fair number of my patients had been children." And fortunately, most of those cases had turned out as well as Christian's - he'd e-mailed Joey and William about a fun field trip his fifth grade class had taken just this week.

"Well, you have a way with them, not just your own."

"Thanks." I was intended to tell her that she did too, but Joey and William appeared suddenly. Jacoby held his arms out to his mother, and my boys waited patiently for her to take him before they swarmed me. "Where's Autumn?" William asked, looking around and expecting to see his sister somewhere, maybe under Leigh's coffee table.

"With Dad," I reminded him. As I did I began to rebutton his coat - he hadn't lined the snaps up properly and didn't seem to have noticed. He fidgeted while I did so, clearly conveying that he didn't consider misbuttoning to be worth the attention. Joey, of course, had his buttons done up properly. He continued to be more detailed oriented than his brother, and I figured he always would be. "All set?" I asked, looking to make sure they had their backpacks. "Did you work on homework here?"

"Yup."

"Did you check to make sure you put it back in your backpack?"

"Oh." William darted out of the room and returned with a handful of worksheets.

Joey held open his backpack so I could see that his was in there.

"Mush," I said pointing at the Blackwoods' front door.

"Hope that's not what's for dinner," William muttered.

I openly smirked when Joey said, "Nah, it's not Dad's night to cook."

I let them go first, lingering long enough to say goodbye to Leigh. When they got to my car I unlocked it with my key fob, which William insisted was magic until he was almost five. "Thanks again," I told Leigh.

"Any time," she smiled as she spoke. I guessed that they really hadn't be any trouble given her lack of hesitation. That was good to know. I hurried out when the kids got the car doors open.

* * *

"Did you have a good afternoon?" I asked the boys as they climbed into the backseat. Joey had some trouble with his seatbelt, but William leaned over and helped him get it buckled.

"Pretty good," Joey told me. "I didn't know that teachers don't get to go home when we do. Leigh said that Mr. Blackwood never leaves right when the bell rings like we do. He didn't get home too long before you came to get us."

"Teachers usually stay late to grade stuff, or to plan for the next day," I told him. It must have been a little strange to be in their teacher's home knowing that he wasn't there most of the time. At least they were old enough not to be laboring under the misconception a lot of smaller kids had, that teachers lived at the school. Knowing they went home was definitely progress, I thought, trying not to smile at the idea of the poor teachers sleeping on their desks or on mats in the gym.

"That's what Leigh said," Joey said with a nod of agreement.

"How about you?" I asked William. He was unusually quiet, but I noticed that he was looking his window.

"Pretty good. Leigh reminds me of you, Mom."

"How?" I asked, blinking. Leigh and I were alike?

William shrugged. "Dunno, she just is a little like you."

"Do you mean we look alike or act alike?"

"Act. 'cept having blue eyes like me and Joey do too, you don't look alike."

"Ah, okay." I still wondered how he thought we acted alike, but he'd immediately begun chatting with his brother about something that had happened during the school day. Maybe he'd think of a way to articulate that later.

* * *

I didn't hear so much as feel the kitchen door open when I was making dinner a little later on. My back had been to the door because I was looking in the cabinets for pasta, but a cool breeze had me turning just in time to see Mulder carrying Autumn in through the doorway. She was so bundled up in her baby seat that it was almost impossible to see any part of her other than her closed eyes.

"Hey," Mulder said, pausing long enough to put Autumn's seat on the floor before hugging me. "How did it go today?"

"Good," I said after kissing him. "Really good."

"Yeah?" His eyes held curiosity, but he didn't press.

I snaked an arm around his waist and decided not to wait to tell him. "I'm not going to be starting until June. They blew the timeline on the building renovations, so they don't want me to start until there's a place to put me."

"Oh," he said. His face spoke of mixed emotions. "Are you okay with that?"

"Am I okay with having more time home with my baby, sure," I said flippantly. Then I wondered if me being home might not be what he'd hoped for, especially after spending a whole day getting writing advice. What if they'd told him that it was imperative that he have time alone to write? Me being around for three extra months would certainly put a damper on any enthusiasm he'd built up at the workshop.

"I figured you'd like that part," he told me. "I was wondering about the another three months without income part."

"Oh! I forgot to tell you, they're going to pay me anyway."

"You didn't lead with that?" he asked dryly.

"Oops. So how did today go for you?"

Mulder shrugged and I felt a surge of disappointment for him. Without a word he'd just told me that the day wasn't nearly as life-changing as he'd hoped. "Most of what was said I could have read in On Writing or some other book about writing professionally."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I got to hang out with other people who are still working on their books too. And I've learned that in comparison to some, I've actually already have accomplished a lot with both planning and writing."

"Well that's good," I told him.

At that very moment Autumn woke up and began cooing for attention, both the boys ran into the room to inform us they were hungry, and the pot of water I'd put on the stove for the pasta I'd never put in it began to boil over. In other words, it turned into a typical evening.


	4. The Eclectoporium

The next morning I gave Mulder a dubious look as he put on his coat. "Are you sure you want to drive all the way to Portmouth?"

He shrugged. "That's the nearest bookstore."

This was the unfortunate truth: Judith had been lamenting the decline of bookstores in New Hampshire just a few weeks earlier. She'd told me that there were currently less than half the number of bookstores within a 100 mile radius now than there had been just ten years ago. For an avid reader like her, this was the sad reality now that there were so many options for buying books online. Mostly she said she missed being able to walk into a store and read the backs of dozens of books without making a day of getting there first.

I almost asked him if he really needed the books right then instead of ordering them from the internet, but I didn't. It was a miracle that his disappointing writers' workshop hadn't put a complete damper on his enthusiasm, so far be it from me to suggest he not go through whatever he needed to in order to maintain momentum. If that meant taking a long drive on a cold day, I guess that was what he needed to do.

"Okay," I told him, kissing his cheek when he bent near enough for me to.

He gave me a wry smile. "And if it makes you feel any better, I did think to call and have them hold the books for me."

That did make a difference, and lately it was the sort of detail I would have overlooked myself. It was slow-going adjusting to getting up a couple of times a night to feed Autumn, and I had a sneaking suspicion that many of my brain cells were hibernating while I tried to make the transition. "Smart thinking."

He responded by smirking and bowing. "What are you going to do with the kids today?"

I shrugged. It was one of those mysterious teacher workshop days I'd always wondered about. "I think I'll play it by ear," I told him. "See what they have in mind."

"Well, I can tell you that Autumn's plans include sleeping, eating, barfing, and pooping."

"Good thing she can do that just about anywhere."

"Ha. I bet the boys will have better ideas."

"And if they don't, they probably won't be barfing at the very least," I said, hoping hard that it was true. Kids were walking germ factories, but it seemed like both boys had somewhat better constitutions than many of their classmates, being sick about half as often. I'd never said it aloud, but I was marginally pleased that they _did_ get sick once in a while - Jeffrey Spender's words about William being more human than human (even though he hadn't realized that the baby he'd spoken over was Joey at the time) had rocked me more than I wanted to admit. Every sign that both boys were just regular kids was moderately comforting.

"God, I hope not," Mulder groaned. "Remember when they both got sick the October before last?"

"How could I forget?" There had been a lot of barfing. And a subsequent lecture about how we need to wash our hands to protect ourselves from people who don't bother leaving their illnesses at home. So far they'd avoided getting another norovirus again since.

He looked around furtively, like he was about to try to get away with something. Turns out he was just trying to get away. "I better get going before they wake up."

"Right." We'd discussed his reasons for not wanting to take the boys with him the night before, and I couldn't blame him from wanting to leave before they woke up and came up for arguments in favor of going with him. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them, but I could probably come up with something more educational than a shopping trip. "Drive carefully."

"Promise. And you too, if you leave the house."

"Oh, we'll leave the house," I declared. I wasn't spending the whole day in the house with two kids and an infant, even if it was a cold winter day.

* * *

My mother hadn't believed in letting kids sleep in, even on scheduled days off or snow days, so if I'd been her I would have gotten the kids out of bed at the usual time. But as much as I love my mom, I haven't sought to duplicate all of her child-rearing practices, which is why I let them sleep and enjoyed the quiet with a book until they stumbled downstairs looking for breakfast.

For some reason the sight of equally tousled red and brown hair framing their sleepy faces, not to mention their cartoon covered PJs, had me smiling as I tossed my book aside. They were still really adorable sometimes, as big as they were getting. "Hey guys," I said, holding my arms out. They immediately came over to hug me. "How are you?"

"Good," Joey said. Then he yawned loudly. "Whoops."

"Yeah, pretty good," William agreed through an equally loud yawn.

"I was thinking about Belgium waffles," I told them. "Sound good?"

This perked them up. "Yeah!"

"Okay, then." It was only then that I realized that I could hear Autumn through the baby monitor. She wasn't crying, but she was definitely awake. "Hey, if I go get Autumn, could you guys entertain her while I cook?"

"Uh huh," William told me. They liked playing with their sister, not that she could do much yet. She'd recently begun to smile when they 'played' with her, so she was apparently amused by her brothers' antics.

"Thanks."

I brought the baby into the living room and put her on one of the many baby blankets people had given me. This way she was warm but no one had to worry that they might drop her or that she might learn how to roll over sooner than expected. They both sat on the floor with her and made faces at her to make her smile. Whatever worked.

A short while later the kids dug into their waffles and finally looked fully awake. I hated when parents inadvertently encouraged their kids to either shovel their food down or talk with their mouths full by demanding answers to questions while they were eating, so I let them eat in peace.

It was only when they were through putting their plates in the dishwasher that I started asking questions. "What do you want to do today?"

Joey shrugged. "Dunno."

When I looked at William, he shrugged too. "Dad's gonna take us to make something at Home Depot-" he said, referring to their craft program for kids, which he had somehow talked Mulder into bringing him to every time it was offered over the past three months. "But that's not until this weekend."

"Mom, what is there to do on a weekday?" Joey wanted to know.

"Well, we could go to the library for storytime-"

"No!" William groaned. "That's for babies."

I guess he did have a point, most of the books were picture books. "The park?"

Joey made a show of shivering exaggeratedly. "Too cold."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I found myself imagining sitting on an ice cold metal bench while they climbed on equally frigid playground equipment. Good thing they didn't want to go to the park.

I was on the verge of grabbing my laptop to look for suggestions on the town's message board when someone knocked on the door. "Who's that?" Joey asked.

I shrugged. "Did I suddenly develop x-ray vision?" I asked in a deadpan Mulder would be proud of.

This had him giggling. "No!"

William looked at him. "Are you sure?" Swiveling his head towards me he asked, "Mom, would you tell us if you did?"

"Yes. I would definitely tell you if I could see your bones."

"Ha, your bones are showing," he chortled, cracking himself up.

Looking at Joey, I said, "I can't see through doors any better than you."

"Oh, okay. Can I get it?"

I waved to indicate that he was free to, and he raced to the front door. William was only two steps behind.

By the time I followed with Autumn in my arms, Daniel was standing there looking sheepish. I can only imagine what my sons might have said to him. "Morning, Dana."

"Hi, Daniel. What can I do for you?"

"I'm bringing my boys to the Eclectoporium and Declan was hoping that Joey and William might be able to come too."

"The Eclectoporium?" I repeated, puzzled.

"I don't know if you met Russell-"

"Oh, is that Russell Carr's place?" I asked, thinking of his 'museum'. "I heard a little about his collection on New Years Eve."

"What's an eclec, eclecto...um..." William tried to ask.

"Good question," Daniel told him, and I wondered if he was being sarcastic. Apparently he wasn't. "It's a small museum. Eclectic means 'random' and the exhibits are about as random a collection as possible. But keep in mind it's small stuff. No dinosaurs or anything."

"Weird stuff?" Joey asked.

"A lot of it, yeah," Daniel admitted.

"Cool. Our dad would like that if he was home."

"Oh, he's not home?" He looked surprised. I guess he didn't take note of Mulder's car being missing. "I was just going to ask if the boys could come, but you're welcome to join us too."

I almost automatically declined, but then I thought about it. What did I have that was better to do? "I think that would be nice. And this way you won't have to figure out how to get two more kids into your car." The moment I said it, his expression gave away the fact that he hadn't thought about that detail.

"Yay, let's go!" William said with enthusiasm. He started to reach for his coat on the coat tree.

His excitement wilted a little when I gave him and Joey a pointed look. "What have we talked about when it comes to wearing pajamas in public?"

They both sighed. William wrinkled his nose and dutifully recited, "The only people over the age of three who are allowed to wear their jammies out of the house have better just had an operation."

"Or triplets," Joey added. "And everyone else who wears their jammies in public is a slob who should know better."

"So..." I prompted.

"Thank you, we'll be right back," Joey promised hurriedly, giving his brother a little shove towards the stairs.

As they left I opened the door wider and asked Daniel, "Coffee?"

He started to nod, then looked concerned. "I appreciate the offer, but I think I'd better go check on my guys. They aren't getting along the best lately."

"Okay. I'll follow you when we leave."

"Right, you probably have no idea where it is. If you honk the horn when they're ready, I should be able to hear you. Even if there's yelling."

It was hard not to cringe thinking about his youngest having a meltdown in the driveway a few days ago. "I will."

* * *

When Hattie told me that Russell's museum had once been the spiritualism society's home, I'd immediately imagined an imposing, worn around the edges gingerbread Victorian. The weathered shingles would be black, and if you looked up at the widow's walk, you'd either see ravens or bats, depending on the time of day. And in the windows several stories up, you'd catch faint movement that would put you in the right frame of mind to imagine ghosts.

So it was a little bit of a let down to pull into the driveway of an fairly ordinary, if large, brick building. The kids didn't seem to have had any expectations, they were just antsy while they waited for me to extract Autumn from her car seat and put her in her sling - I was really going to miss it when she outgrew it, since it did keep my hands free.

William hung back a moment, giving the building a contemplative look. "I guess it'd be really hard to fit a dinosaur in here."

"Nah," Joey immediately disagreed. "Some dinosaurs were really little, like chickens."

"I meant a good one. Who cares about dinosaurs that are littler than Thanksgiving dinner?"

"If we had one, you'd think it was cool."

"Well, yeah," William instantly admitted.

They didn't seem to mind when I poked them to get them moving towards where Daniel stood with his boys. It really was that cold out.

I only noticed how tense Daniel was when I realized that he had his hand clamped around his younger son's wrist. From the look on Rhys's face, I guessed that he'd already tried to make a break for it, and we just hadn't noticed.

"Hi Declan!" William called at the same moment Joey said "Hey Declan."

He smiled brightly at them and returned their greetings.

While I appreciated the fact that my boys had greeted the older boy so nicely, I didn't want the little one to feel left out, so I looked down at him and smiled. "Nice to meet you, Rhys."

He only scowled until Daniel said "Rhys" in a warning tone.

"Nice to meet you too," he finally mumbled, not looking up at me.

* * *

The first thing I realized when we stepped inside was that the building was one of those deceptive places that was a lot larger than it appeared from the outside. as long as I didn't have to play hide and seek with mutants in there it was okay by me.

Of course, the second thing I realized was why Russell's friends had given him such a hard time on New Year's Eve. The concept of the place seemed to pretty much the same as the kitchen junk drawer in my childhood home: Mom had grouped things roughly and hoped for the best. Here, somewhat similar things had been arranged to share alcoves and small rooms, both of which the building was rich with.

"Wow!" William exclaimed. "There is _a lot_ of stuff here."

"Even more than in your closet," Joey teased.

"Yeah, I'll say."

I only had a second to adjust the baby bag so it stopped feeling like I was in danger of being garroted and glance around to try to pick a place to begin when a voice called "Dan! Dana! So good to see you!"

Dan? I wondered. My taciturn neighbor didn't strike me as the "Dan" type.

Russell appeared from behind an over-sized dresser's dummy, all smiles. He tapped the dummy as he passed it. "Got this beauty from the descendants of one of the Massachusetts mill girls."

"Must have been quite a large mill girl," Daniel remarked.

I couldn't fault him for it; Mrs. mill girl had to be close to seven feet tall if the dummy was used to construct her own garments.

Russell took this in stride, merely nodding. "The grandson who trucked it up here played college basketball."

''Huh."

"So, what brings you in today?"

After his 'advice' led me to learning more about the town's checked past than I'd ever wanted to, I couldn't help but say the semi-snide thing I was thinking. "Just couldn't go another day without seeing those Van Buren steins."

"Um, oh." The look he gave me as much as said that he couldn't tell if I was joking. I knew that given how many times I'd seen that very look directed at Mulder. "They're downstairs," he said gamely. "Generally speaking I just let people explore at their own pace, but if you come across anything you want to know more about, just holler."

"Thanks," Daniel said for the both of us, and I watched Russell disappear.

It was only after he left that I realized that he wasn't the only one to have pulled a disappearing act: except for Autumn, Daniel and I were alone.

"Oh, no," I muttered in dismay. The boys could be anywhere in that labyrinth.

"Sorry, I should have warned you," Daniel apologized.

"Warned me about what?" I practically turned in a complete circle, but I didn't catch even the barest glimpse of the kids.

'"My boys really love this place, and I usually let them wander off. Yours must have followed them."

"Hmm." For a moment I wonder what the appeal might be, but then it hit me: this place also reminded me of the treasure boy Charlie had kept under his bed as a little boy. Maybe it was the museum's jumbled nature that appealed to little boy aesthetics in the same way it overwhelmed my own.

I must have looked a little nervous because Daniel grinned and said, "Don't worry. No one's ever had to call in a code Adam."

This earned him a grudging smile. "Lead on."

* * *

We caught up with the kids four or five rooms later. I was tempted to ask Russell if he had a copy of the floor plan because I couldn't wrap my head around it. Many of the rooms led into others, and the floor was broken up by condors that I'd swear were placed at complete random - to confuse the ghosts, a small voice at the back of my mind suggested. It did make me wonder what room the séances had been held in...

"Mom!" William called as soon as he saw me. "Look at this!"

"This" turned out to be a taxidermed bald eagle. I didn't even want to know how Russell had gotten it. "Wow." Looking at it's brown feathers reminded me that only fully grown eagles had the classic coloring.

Turns out I wasn't the only one thinking about that. "It's, um, well it's shaped like a bald eagle, but it doesn't look like Sam," William said, referring to the Muppet. "Is it a girl? I know girl birds can look different from boy birds."

"Nope." I tapped a small sign to draw his attention to it. "It's a juvenile." Which made me a little sad.

He looked confused. "It was bad?"

At first I had no idea what he meant, and when I figured it out I had to force myself not to laugh. "No, when they call someone a 'juvenile delinquent,' delinquent means they did something wrong. Juvenile means they're not a grownup yet."

William gave the stuffed bird a stunned look. "It's a baby?!"

"Well, "I told him." More like a teenager. He'd probably have gotten grown up feathers in a few months."

"Oh, okay." This seemed to calm him, and I doubted he'd worry about monstrously large eagles anymore. Even still, I made a mental note to have Mulder avoid any bedtime stories featuring a mythical roc any time soon.

Joey and Declan were staring down at something, and even when I got close I couldn't have told you what it was... Which is what the sign in front of it suggested you guess.

"Mom, what is it?" Joey asked. Next to him Declan shrugged.

"Honestly, I have no idea." It sort of looked like a gasket, and was a light tan-gray color. I didn't poke at it like the kids did, but I thought the texture was quite similar to the Nerf footballs Mulder had already bought for the boys' Easter baskets.

"I think it being in this room is a clue," Joey told me. I looked around, past the eagle.

Shells and bones, more unfortunate animals that had been stuffed. "You think it's organic?"

"Um..." The way his gears spun made me realize that fruits, veggies, and chickens were probably his only context for the word.

Declan, being a bit older and having had more science classes, understood what I'd meant. "That's from something a live? We think so."

Frowning down at the floppy ring of whatever it was, I wasn't so sure that I was inclined to agree with their guess.

But Daniel did. "That's right."

I looked up, throwing him a startled look. "You know what this is?"

"Yes."

"Dad, tell us!" Declan begged.

"Okay. Late at night a creature ventures out onto the damp sands of beaches, looking for dates," Daniel began. I hadn't pegged him for a storyteller, so I was amused. "These creatures are...giant snails."

"Snails?" three of the boys asked, each incredulous.

"Moon snails," Daniel told them. "Something like that-" He pointed at the curious object. "Contains thousand of snail eggs."

"Weird!"

Autumn was content in her sling and three out of four boys were thoroughly entertained, so it was easy to be lulled into a false sense of peace. At least until a little hand grabbed up the egg casting and dashed it to the floor.

"Rhys!" Declan groaned. His face merely looked resigned, like he had fully expected something like this to happen sooner or later.

And what did happen was that Rhys had a complete meltdown like he had at Daniel's house soon after the boys arrived. I really wanted to help make it better, but there wasn't really anything to do. So when Daniel suggested "Maybe you could take them to the gift shop" in a strained voice, I instantly agreed.

Honestly, I was a bit surprised that there was a gift shop, but I shouldn't have been. Besides typical "New Hampshire" branded stuff, there were toy dinosaurs and yeti, and some sciency kits, and other assorted things that were meant to appeal to tourists and/or children.

The kids exclaimed over the stuff, but I barely noticed it. All I could think about was little Rhys having a temper tantrum in one of the other rooms.

For years and years, more than a decade even, all I thought I wanted was a normal life. Even now I'd freaked out a few days ago when I caught the faintest whiff of something that could put that into danger. But did I really want_ normal_?

Normal wasn't finding out that you had children you didn't know about, and only getting to have the last one you knew about before birth because you won your stolen ova back. Normal wasn't having a sister-in-law who had disappeared as a child. And it certainly wasn't spending most of your career chasing down things that other people were terrified to admit existed.

Instead it was having a first grader who couldn't cope with your divorce, and not knowing how to make things better for him. It was having an older child with sad eyes who got ignored when you had to focus all your energy on the one who was hurting out loud.

Daniel had a normal life. It just didn't look very appealing from where I stood.

"Mom." A small hand tugged on mine until I looked down. "You should get these for Dad."

Joey handed me a package of buffalo flavored sunflower seeds. I shuddered. So far none of the kids took after Mulder in that regard, which was fine by me. It was enough work to nag one person to clean up his shells. "Um, okay."

By the time we left a fifteen minutes later, I was glad for the sort of life Mulder and I had, even if it hadn't exactly been ordinary much of the time. We had a solid marriage, great kids, and less dangerous livelihoods than we used to. That was a lot to be thankful for.

Still, I frowned to myself when Rhys acted up again when we got to our cars. Was there a tactful way to suggest family therapy, I wondered. Maybe Mulder had taken a class on that sort of thing. Hell, maybe I could get him to talk to Daniel or even Rhys. There had to be some way to help, I just didn't know what it was yet.


	5. Teasing

I was humming to myself as I chopped up vegetables for a stew one afternoon, and a cold breeze behind me was the first sign I had that the kids had come home from school. Fortunately, I put my knife down just in time to have Joey come and give me a quick hug before disappearing towards his room. That seemed a little odd to me, until I saw William's face, anyway.

"What's wrong?" I asked immediately. Of my boys William was consistently the more happy-go-lucky, so it was somewhat shocking to see such a woebegone expression on his face.

He sighed, and sat himself at the kitchen table. I sat down too. "I'm supposed to tell you something."

"What's that?" I asked, sensing that something had either gone wrong at school or on the bus.

"I have detention tomorrow."

"Why?" I blurted out. Neither of the kids had ever gotten in trouble at school before, at least not to the extent of having to stay after.

William didn't meet my eyes. "For fighting," he said reluctantly.

"William! What on earth were you fighting about?"

When he answered me, I could barely hear him. "Joey."

"Oh." for some reason, when I ran the possible explanations through my mind, that hadn't been one of them. After a moment I asked, "what happened?"

He shrugged. "A bigger kid wouldn't stop teasing him about having red hair. I made him stop."

This had me wincing, and I hoped that William didn't notice. Having red hair had been harder on my brothers than me. I had been teased too, but I hadn't gotten into any physical fights over. My mother always said that it was anti-Irish are anti-Catholic sentiment, but either way my brothers had come home from school with bloody noses more than once.

Given I hadn't heard anything about teasing, I had hoped that things would be different for Joey and Autumn. "How long is this been going on, the teasing?" I finally asked.

William frowned up at me. "Since we moved here."

That really bothered me. "And neither of you thought to say anything to dad or me?"

"I wanted to! But he said not to. So I couldn't."

I gave him a stern look. "I know that you were trying to be a good brother, and not tell his secrets, but if things have escalated to the point of getting into an actual fight…" I trailed off, letting him think about that.

"Yeah." Then he looked up to me, eyes wide with concern and guilt. "Am I gonna be grounded too?"

My first instinct was to say no of course not, but I didn't want to make light of it. "I need to talk to your dad first."

"Right." He sighed and stood up. Then he thought better of it and looked at me for permission to leave, so I nodded.

I would talk to Mulder about it, but really, I wanted to call my mother. If anyone had some insight into what to do about teased little redheads, it would be her. Eventually I'd have to speak to William about it too, but I wanted to give him a chance to bring it up himself first.

* * *

I only discovered the fact that there was a parent-teacher conference the afternoon before it happened. We sat William down once a month and insisted that he clean out his backpack. Joey had been trained to be tidy at the private boarding school the Van De Kamps had sent him to for kindergarten. There were a lot of their methods I didn't agree with but their approach to cleanliness wasn't one I faulted. So, Joey got to read a book while his brother and I sorted through crumpled tests and food wrappers. William was the most interested in saving the trading cards that littered the bottom of the backpack.

"You should put those in a baggie," I suggested when he lamented over a bent card.

"Uh, okay," he agreed and instantly got up to get one.

It was only then that I got to a folder up flyer. When I smoothed it out and read it, I groaned. William looked over at me, plastic bag in hand. "You have a parent-teacher night at school tomorrow? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot."

"You and Joey both forgot?" I asked incredulously. They were little boys and both forgot things they were told on a regular basis like all kids their age, but why had they both forgotten a fairly important piece of information?

"No... Mister Blackwood said it 'd waste paper to give us two notes, so he just gave it to me." William shrugged.

Well, that was something to talk to their teacher about: if he wanted to save the trees, he should give my neater son the notices or we might never see them. What if we hadn't cleaned out William's backpack until later in the week? Missing it for such a dumb reason would have been pretty embarrassing to me.

Or both of us, I realized as I read the note more carefully. The school requested that both parents attend if possible, and that they not bring the kids. Made me wonder if this had been worked out in collusion with the town's secret baby-sitting cartel because this request had to be burdensome to many families... Crap, I needed a babysitter too!

"William..." I sighed. "You need to try harder to remember this sort of thing."

"Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"Clean up the rest of this, okay? I need to make a phone call."

"Yup!"

At least one of us was still in a good mood. I was trying to wrack my brain about who I could ask to watch the kids if Leigh couldn't. She probably couldn't, there had to be a lot of parents who needed sitters. Judith had already said she only minded kids "in an emergency" and this was hardly one even if it was stressful. Daniel might, if he was home. His boys had returned to his ex, so he might have a business trip, lined up... My brain suggested that Max Kirby still owed me one, and if it just had been the boys I actually might have considered him. But there was no way I was going to ask him to look after a newborn - he didn't owe me that much... Too bad it was such a long drive to Haven because I'd been assured by two different people that Nathan was great with babies. I wanted to see that for myself actually.

While I ran through the slim possibilities of who else I could get to watch the kids, If shed through my purse for my phone. "Maybe Leigh can suggest someone," I muttered as I punched in her number.

She picked up on the second ring. "um, hi Leigh. It's Dana Scully. I know this is last minute, but I just now found out about the kids' parent-teacher conference, but I was hoping if you're not free yourself - and I don't expect you to be given it's tomorrow - you might know someone who 'd be comfortable babysitting both the kids and the baby..." I trailed off, feeling stupid. This was the second time I'd asked for her help on very short notice. She most think I was a flake, or at best one of those absent-minded professor types.

After a beat, she said, "You actually have pretty good timing. The family I was going to sit for tomorrow just cancelled on me."

"So you can watch them?" I asked, hoping I wasn't misinterpreting her comment. My luck was never that good, so I was second guessing myself.

"Right." She sounded amused. "I'll need to bring Jacoby over with me though."

"Of course." Until she said that, I hadn't really considered that the sitter might come to our house rather than visa versa. It probably was easier to go to an infant's home than to have everything on hand for the rare occasions you watched a baby.

I'll bring his playpen," Leigh promised.

"Thanks so much," I told her, no longer worried about sounding flaky.

"No problem," Leigh told me. "When the Dions cancelled I was sure I'd be out a night's work because most families have a sitter lined up by now."

This made me wince; I probably wasn't in the running for Mom of the Year. "Well, I guess I'll see you tomorrow night." I didn't bother saying when, as a teacher's wife she knew very well when.

"See you tomorrow, Dana."

I hung up feeling a sense of relief... at least until I remembered that I still needed to let Mulder know that our plans for a popcorn and movie night had been changed for us. He wouldn't be thrilled, and I would've rather stayed home to watch movies too. They say being involved with your kids' school is its own reward, but sometimes...

* * *

People with small babies don't tend to have the neatest houses, but I was feeling pretty good about how tidy the house was the next night. There had only been minimal argument from William about taming his room once I pointed out he would have had more time if he'd remembered to give us Mr. Blackwood's note earlier. Maybe it was a low blow, but I wasn't sad that his action had led to in convince for him too. A teachable moment, we'll call it.

Joey volunteered to clean their bathroom, leading me to believe he wasn't as shocked to learn about Parents' Night as his father and I had been. My brother Charlie had been a guilty cleaner as a kid too, so it just might run in the family.

I'd just turned the dishwasher on when I heard the front door open and close. Going to the window, I saw Mulder pull Jacoby's play pen out of Leigh's trunk. She had the toddler on her hip, and I sort of wondered what she was saying to Mulder.

I couldn't hear Jacoby either, but I was pretty sure the word he was repeating was "down" based on his body language. I was not looking forward to the stage when Autumn would be as suicidally determined to be put down at all costs as William had once been: I'd nearly dropped him on his head half a dozen times before he turned three.

Joey opened the door and a gust of cold air that left me shivering beat them inside. For a moment there was a confusion of stamped feet and hung coats, and then Mulder returned his attention to the playpen. I could see that Leigh wanted to protest that he didn't need to set it up for her, but in his capable hands it instantly unfolded, as if by magic.

"There," he said, satisfied.

"Thanks," Leigh told him. The way she was looking at the playpen as much as said she'd never gotten it set up that easily.

"Autumn is sleeping," William helpfully informed us.

'"We'll try not to wake her, but I need to show Leigh her room," I explained.

He and his brother nodded; "try not to" was sometimes theoretical when it came to my daughter. I'd swear that she was going to prove to have inherited my mother's supernaturally good hearing. Even now I could set my brothers off by reminding them of things we hadn't quite gotten away with because Mom had overheard... Missy had been the one to get in trouble due to that the most often, I remembered with a pang.

Leigh's footfalls behind me made only the softest sounds as I led the way to the nursery. In the dark only large shapes like the crib and dresser could be made out. Even the mobile Mulder and William put together was invisible. After I was sure she could find the crib, we stepped back into the hallway, and I carefully closed the door.

As soon as I did, she sighed. Then she blushed a little when she realized I was looking at her. "I can hardly remember when Jacoby was that tiny. It must have been harder for you, given how much older your boys are."

Something about her expression gave me the idea that she was imaging me looking back on having two babies; she had no way of knowing that I'd only cared for my sons together as infants for one night. Not wanting to go into all of that, I just nodded.

She gave me a shy smile. "I'm glad the big age gap works for you but we're not going to wait so long. In the next year, year and a half, we'd like to give Jacoby a little sister or brother."

That made me think of how everyone seemed to think we, and me especially, were grateful that Autumn had turned out to be a girl. I'll admit I'm very pleased to have a little girl, but if Autumn had been a boy (I would have wanted to name him August. Baby Gus. May not have won that argument, though) that would have been okay too - We just had wanted one more to complete our family, and what was in their diaper hadn't mattered much to either of us.

"Just two?" I asked, just to say something.

She blushed a little. "Aaron hated being an only child a lot more than I did. He suggested six or seven." I made a choking noise and she gave me a wry smile. "-But I said let's have three and see how we feel after that."

I nodded. "You're both young, you have time to sort it out." I remember despairing when William was Jacoby's age, certain that I'd never be able to give him a brother or sister even though Mulder and I had finally settled down enough to give him a normal life. Sometimes it was nice to be proven so wrong.

Leigh relaxed. "That's what I tell him but he's still disappointed we don't already have two."

"Eight years between babies, well I wouldn't recommend that for everyone, but too close can be even worse. My older siblings were only 13 months apart and fought like cats and dogs. I'm three years older than the baby of the family and he and I got along much better."

"Do your older siblings get along now?" Leigh asked, interested.

It was hard not to sigh; I'd opened that can of worms myself, so I could hardly complain. "Oh. Missy died several years ago. But yes, by the time Bill left home they got along pretty well."

"I'm so sorry," Leigh said awkwardly.

"Don't worry about it," I said, tone lighter than I really felt. Good thing we were busy or I'd follow thinking about Missy down the usual path that began with my father and ended with the gunmen.

By the time we returned to the living room, Mulder had the boys' attention. "When we get home, I want the dishwasher to be empty, your homework done, and-" He brought something from behind his back. "-this movie watched." They eagerly reached for the DVD box.

"Oh, cool!" Joey exclaimed when he read the title. I couldn't see it from there but the box seemed to have both pirates and dinosaurs on it. One of Mulder's D movie picks, no doubt. I made a mental note to look up Ed Wood and see if he did anything with dinos.

"So," Mulder said, making them look up again. "Dishwasher, homework, movie. Right?"

"Right!" William agreed.

"In that order?" Joey asked

"In that order."

"Okay." Glancing at William he said, "we need to listen for the dishwasher being done."

"Dad, can we start-" William started to say, but Mulder cut him off.

"You can do your homework first, if you want to. Just... movie last."

Leigh shot me a look, as if to ask 'is this what having two close in age is like?' I just shrugged.

"Leigh, you have my cell phone number, right?" Mulder wanted to know. He was yanking on his coat.

She pulled out her phone and double-checked. "I do."

"Great. Be good," Mulder said to the kids as we moved towards the door.

"Dad!" came an outraged protest. "We're not bratty little kids."

I shook my head after we closed the door. Were either of us going to be up for two teenagers in just over four years? I was beginning to get a sense of how my mother, in moments of exasperation, had been driven to threaten to send Bill and Charlie to seminary school.

'"They can be so touchy sometimes," Mulder complained when we got into the car.

I smirked at him. "I'm afraid they're human after all."

"Maybe we should have tried to get more DNA of alien origin in our systems before we had them."

He started the car and I gave him a long look. "What, like Gibson?"

Mulder shivered. "Don't get me wrong, Praise is a good kid, but... spooky."

"I know." Years ago I'd debated what to do with him with John and Monica. We had all been willing, if not eager, to take him in. Even Skinner had reluctantly suggested himself as an option. Gibson had been across town, with Marita, at the time, and he called during the middle of our conversation, announcing that he wanted our help getting him into a European boarding school.

I hadn't had a lot of time to think about it at the time because we soon busted Mulder out and everything that went wrong soon had him and me on the run, but later on I wondered if his timing had been coincidental, or if he could read people from a lot farther away than he would ever admit...

"I heard from him yesterday, actually," Mulder told me.

I almost asked why he hadn't told me, but remembered how chaotic the night before had gotten. It probably slipped his mind. "How' s med school going?"

"Good. He's thinking of specializing in psychology." Mulder glanced at me. "What?"

''I think it's a good idea. I bet a lot of psychologists wished they could read minds."

He laughed. "No doubt."


	6. Confusion

It felt strange to me to be parking in the elementary school after dark. I suppose it wouldn't have if we were the sort of parents who scheduled every moment of their children's lives and signed them up for a dozen after school activities... or that could just be me lashing out for feeling guilty that I hadn't yet signed them up for any. I made a mental note to at least have Mulder talk to them about spring sports.

Mulder slammed his door before coming around to open mine. It was completely unnecessary now that the baby was here and no longer making me awkward, but I can't say that I didn't appreciate the gallantry. Mrs. Mulder had raised a boy who could be a gentleman - when it suited him. There were times when I didn't want a gentleman, so it was fine by me.

The appointments to see the teachers were staggered, understandable so they didn't get mobbed, so it gave us a few minutes to admire the artwork hung in the hallway.

"Getting a jump on saint Patrick's day, I see," Mulder murmured down to me.

A plethora of shamrocks and Leprechauns did indeed give that impression. They were cute enough but brought back uncomfortable memorizes of when Sister Wendy had traumatized my entire second grade class by showing us Darby O' Gill and the Little People one snowy afternoon.

''Hopefully no little people will sue for being mocked," he next remarked.

I wrinkled my nose. "It's not like they can use 'think spring' as a theme. Not when a March beginning to spring is merely hypothetical in New England," I shot back.

He grinned. "Spoken like someone who has spent a little too much of their life at the business end of a shovel."

His remark wasn't particularly logical, but I knew what he was getting at, so I laughed.

After a few minutes in the hallway, during which Mulder cracked increasingly bad jokes, the classroom door finally opened and another couple came out. They were both older than us. Back when I was pregnant with William I imagined being the oldest mom at his school functions, but over the years in between I'd met several mothers who were even older. But for some reason I didn't think they meant they had quite the same reasons for waiting when some of them said it was due to their careers; the average doctor or lawyer probably was a lot less concerned about her safety than I had been while chasing down monsters...

The other couple was rounding a corner when the door opened again and a young blond man looked out at us. "Mister Mulder, Doctor Scully," he said politely but I knew Mulder was fighting not to smirk over being called "mister"; he was Agent Mulder too long to like the non-important title much. I could easily imagine him grimacing over the "M" word into his 80s.

"Mister Blackwood," Mulder replied blandly.

Aaron looked uncertain and didn't say anything as he stepped back to let us into the room. We followed him up to his desk.

It was hard to imagine this young man as someone eager for a houseful of kids. I knew he had to be in his mid-20s but he looked younger, like a college senior dressed up for his first big job interview. Max Kirby looked positively mature in comparison. But I guess if he was consider responsible enough to look after twenty eight to nine-year-olds, I owed him my respect. Dealing with classes of FBI recruits had been enough to make me batty so I couldn't bear to even try to imagine teaching young children, as much as I loved my own.

Aaron retreated behind his desk, leaving us awkwardly standing there like naughty children being stared down by the principal. My back to school experience was now complete.

He flashed us a brief smile. "I'll admit, when I was told I would be getting two new students and they were twin boys I was a little apprehensive." For a moment I bristled, assuming he was one of those teachers who assumed boys were always more trouble, but as he went on, I realized that wasn't what he'd meant. "Frankly, I was worried about telling them apart!"

Mulder chuckled, but I just found myself thinking of the first time I'd seen Joey since the social worker had taken him away as a baby. Seeing him standing there, scowling up at us, and seeing instantly that he looked so much like my younger bother at that age and realizing that William did too... at that instant I knew he was ours, in my heart, even as my head insisted on waiting for the DNA report.

"Most people comment on how much they look alike," I eventually said.

"Oh, they do," Aaron was quick to agree. "No one who saw them side by side would ever doubt that they're brothers. I just had horrified daydreams about them being identical and never learning to tell them apart."

"I think it disappoints them a little that they can't play Parent Trap sort of pranks," Mulder remarked and I wondered if that was speculation or something they'd actually told him.

"Suppose that'd be hard with mom and Dad together," Aaron said.

"True."

But it could have been like that. We'd talked about Mulder taking William when he'd gone into hiding...

That idea shatter when Mulder asked, so how are they doing?"

Aaron's expression instantly sobered. "Academically, very well. They're both very bright and doing great in both my class and in GATE-" He was referring to the pull-out gifted education program they both participated in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. "Besides William needing occasional reminders to hand in completed homework there are no academic issues I can think of."

A "but" lurked in the room and I decided to bite the bullet to get it out in the open.

"And socially?"

He sighed, which bothered me. "You know about the fight Will had."

My inner most mommy wanted to blame him for having let the teasing happen in the first place but earning a reputation as an overprotective harpy wouldn't do me or the kids any favors. "Yes," I said evenly.

"I spoke to Will and the teacher who broke the fight up. So I know that Joey being teased was the instigating event."

"And?" Mulder asked warily.

"Well..." he began before looking up at us. "You have to realize that I don't like to blame the victim, but I'm hoping you'll be willing to consider something."

My first worry was that he was going to suggest putting one of our sons in a different class - some of the sisters who taught me would have suggested that not having his brother around to literally fight his battles for him would force him to toughen up. But that's not what he had in mind. "There's a new after school group beginning in a couple of weeks, and I think Joey would benefit from being in it."

"What kind of group?"

"Anti-bullying and assertiveness strengthening. I know people love to tell small picked on children that bullies go away if you ignore them, but that doesn't really work. The group will learn about and practice methods that might work better."

I gave Mulder a sidelong glance and wondered if he'd tell Aaron that he had a degree in psychiatry and could fix our son's problem himself, thank you. But he asked, "You don't think singling them out for this is going to get around and give bullies yet more ammo?"

"It's our hope that it won't. I think an innocuous name will help, where calling it something like 'Pride' Or 'End Bullying Now' would only make things worse."

"What are you calling it?" I couldn't help but ask.

"We thought we'd leave that up to the kids to decide during the first meeting, with some guidance, of course."

"We?" Mulder asked. "You'll be involved?"

"Sure will. I had it rough at this age myself."

Mulder looked at me. "Okay with you?"

For some reason I found myself thinking about what my father would have said to such a suggestion. He probably would have told my brothers to man up and maybe been more sympathetic but disappointed in me. Fortunately, I wasn't raising children in my father's day. "Sure. But only if Joey agrees."

"Of course."

Privately I wondered how readily Joey would agree once he realized that William wasn't going to be there, though.

"Great," Aaron enthused.

We spent a few more minutes talking about the kids and some of the remaining activities for the year - which I at the very least appreciated because I hated being blindsided by projects that required last minute shopping trips - then said goodbye and left the room. "Hey!" someone behind us called.

When we looked back, a man motioned Mulder over.

The other parent sidled up to Mulder and grinned at him. "You're Will and Joey's dad, right?"

"That's me."

"I hear you have a new baby too," the father commented.

"Born in December," Mulder confirmed.

"So I guess with active twin boys to look after it took you this long to recover and decide to have another one," the father said, laughing. But he stopped when Mulder glared icily.

"No," is all Mulder said, voice flat.

"Oh, sorry..." the other father said sheepishly. "It was stupid to make a joke when I have no idea..."

* * *

We were walking down the hallway when Mulder's cell phone rang. "Leigh," he told me, looking down at the display. "Maybe she meant to call Aaron instead."

I shrugged.

"Hello?" he asked, smiling. It dropped off his face quickly. "Okay, we'll- damn."

"What?" I asked, suddenly worried. That didn't sound like Leigh had called him by mistake.

To my further alarm, he took my arm and began hurrying me down the hallway. "She said to come home right away, and then the call dropped."

"Did you get any sense of what's wrong?" I demanded to know.

He looked down at me, hazel eyes filled with the same worry that I was sure showed in mine. "No, and that scares the hell out of me," he finally admitted.

I shoved the exit door open instead of saying anything. Leigh wasn't an excitable or inexperienced teenager, so if she called to say we needed to come home, something must be really wrong.

A tense silence filled the car as Mulder broke several speed limit laws in his haste to get us home.

* * *

The only bit of relief I felt was that when we pulled into the driveway, Leigh's car was the only other vehicle there. No police cruiser, no ambulance, no fire truck. Of course that could just mean that things had devolved since Mulder lost the call, a terrified little voice gibbered in the back of my mind.

We raced up the walk, and Mulder almost dropped his keys trying to open the door. Eventually, before he even seated the key, the knob turned, so he stopped trying.

When Leigh opened the door she was shaking and looked horrified.

"Leigh, what's wrong?" Mulder asked, and I could tell he was trying desperately not to panic. I knew that because I was too.

I had already begun to fumble at the catch of my purse, anticipating the need to call 911. I didn't know if the problem was an intruder, or if something happened to one of the kids, though of course the latter was the more upsetting prospect. So, the last thing I expected was for Leigh to say "Why do you have a picture of me?"

"What? We don't," I said blankly. Though Mulder and I have taken a lot of pictures of the kids, Leigh was never around when we did so, at least not that I could think of.

"Yes you do!" she accused, shaking. "It's hanging in the hallway."

If anything, my confusion built. There were only four pictures in the hallway. One of William, one of Joey, one of Autumn, and one of Emily. But just that second, Mulder caught my eye, and he looked like he had had an epiphany. It took my brain a moment to catch up.

Leigh looked a little like Emily. They were both blonde and had blue eyes. Was that why she had gotten upset?

"Oh no," I said in what I hoped was a soothing tone. "That's a picture of my daughter Emily. She died when she was three."

"No, it isn't. That picture is me as a child," Leigh insisted.

"Leigh-" Mulder started to say, but he trailed off, seeming not to know what to say to calm her.

Leigh didn't say anything else. Instead she picked up her sleeping son out of his playpen and then pushed past us, stumbling out the door.

"Leigh!" I gasped, horrified. I didn't know what had her so shaken up, but I was certain that she was in no condition to drive - up until she left so abruptly I'd been planning to call Aaron to come get her on his way home if she refused to let Mulder drive her home as I suspected she would.

Before I could go running after her Mulder put a hand on my shoulder, making me look up at him. "It's okay."

That seemed like a foolish assertion, but before I could say so, he pointed. Leigh wasn't headed for her car. She walked right past it, then looked both ways before darting across the street.

I leaned against Mulder and sighed. "Maybe Judith will be able to calm her down."

"Maybe. I still can't wrap my head around what just happened, though."

Neither could I.


	7. Impossible

It turned out that we wouldn't be left wondering what had made the babysitter flip out for very long. There was a knock on the door about an hour later, and I opened it to find a frazzled looking Judith staring back at me.

She stomped her feet on the welcome mat, knocking snow and slush from boots long enough to disappear up under her skirts. "Can we talk?" she asked.

I stepped back to let her in. "I think we'd better," Mulder said warily.

Judith nodded tiredly, then sat on the couch. She then looked around, seemingly alarmed. "Are the kids in bed? The boys, anyway," she added when she noticed Autumn dosing in my arms.

"Yes."

This seemed to relax her a little, but she looked at her hands instead of at us. "Leigh had a difficult childhood, we think."

"You think?" Mulder said, tone clearly conveying his disbelief that if someone had a difficult childhood or not was the subject of doubt.

"We think," Judith said firmly, uncowed. "I've known her parents for twenty years and I still remember the day they told me that they were going to adopt an older child...Ben and Lydia could never get Leigh to tell them much about her childhood, from before they adopted her. Mostly she claimed then, and still does now, not to remember."

"How old was she when they adopted her?" Mulder asked. I wondered if he was just curious, or if he was trying to figure something out.

Judith shrugged. "Eleven, twelve. I'm not sure if anyone knew her exact birth date, least of all her."

"Is she Russian?" I asked, and they both turned their heads to stare at me.

I refused to blush under their sudden scrutiny. Everything I'd ever read about children adopted from the former USSR suggested that they were badly mistreated and often had adjustment problems when adopted by Americans. The lucky ones adapted and the rest... didn't.

"She's not from one of those overseas adoptions," Judith told me. "I think she was from some southern state originally."

"Leigh had a southern accent?" Mulder asked.

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "She barely talked at all when they first brought her home. It's amazing to think she's normal now." I gave her a sharp look and she sighed. "Leigh wasn't right when she was young. Delayed, they called it. I honestly thought they were trying to be polite about the girl having an intellectual disability, but in a couple of years she caught up to the other kids her age."

"It's good that she caught up," Mulder said a little impatiently. "And while it's a sad tale I'm not sure what it has to do with Leigh freaking out over a picture of Dana's late daughter."

It always threw me a little to hear him refer to me as Dana even when talking to other people. So much of our mutual history had been so insular, so wrapped up in our work that most people we encountered knew only agents Mulder and Scully, not Fox and Dana. Not that anyone was ever allowed to call him Fox even now. Well, besides my mother who had never been able to bring herself to using his last name instead.

"She thinks the child in the photograph is her."

"Yes, she said as much," Mulder complained. "The question is why she thinks so. Does she think it's some sort of mean prank we went to ridiculous lengths to setup? I have to tell you, we're not really known for our senses of humor though we do have moments."

"She doesn't think it's a prank," Judith interrupted, tone grim.

"Then?" I prompted. If Leigh didn't think we were messing with her I was worried about paranoia. She was about the right age for schizophrenia to rear its ugly head.

For a long moment Judith looked away. When she finally spoke again, it was to ask, "I know this is a terrible thing to ask, but... Are you 100% sure your daughter is dead?"

I was about to snap that of course we knew Emily was dead when Mulder quietly said "100%? No." I stared at him, aghast, but he pointedly avoided my eyes. "There were definitely irregularities at the funeral."

So he was thinking about the sand. Eventually I stopped dreaming about it. Trekking through it, digging through it to discover Emily whole and healthy if I just sifted through enough of it... "Mulder," I began my protest.

He shook his head, letting me know he wasn't going to be put off. "Emily is body wasn't in the casket we were given to bury. When I demanded answers long enough from enough of the right people, I was told they were worried about her illness being contagious so they'd taken her so she could be cremated with the proper precautions."

I stared at him, unsure if he was just telling our neighbor a story, or if he'd really demanded and gotten those answers, or ones like them, at some point. Either possibility seemed equally plausible.

"She told me tonight that ever since the first time she met you, she's felt like she'd met you before," Judith offered. "And it finally came to her that you reminded her of the police who got involved when her real parents died when she was small."

I was debating whether or not I should point out that. Emily hadn't lived with her 'real' parents ever and had mostly decided that it would only fuel the crazy notion, when Judith went on. "She said that growing up she wondered now and again if her 'real' parents might not have been. And if not, why her real family hadn't rescued her from foster homes that were so bad that she can't even bear to remember them."

Although I was raring to refute everything Judith said with logic, the look on Mulder's face plainly said he was giving the absurd idea that Leigh was Emily a lot more consideration than I thought it deserved. So I wasn't shocked when he said, "Emily was adopted too. We only found her when she got sick."

"Damn it, Mulder!" I yelled, not really sorry that I woke the baby. When she began to cry I let him take her even as I continued to shout at him. "This is absurd! Emily is dead. Emily has been dead for years!"

He took my abuse with a sad look that immediately made me feel a sense of paranoia myself. Why was he so open to the possibility that this could be real? Had he lied to me when he claimed not to have chosen Ballyguest for a reason?

Judith looked extremely uncomfortable, and I was too upset to feel bad about that too. ''I should go."

"Yes, you should," I replied flatly.

"Good night," Mulder said weakly, barely audible over Autumn's squalling.

As I watch Judith scurry out the door, part of me knew that I'd should apologize to her, but I just didn't have it in me to do it right then. Right then I was more concerned with what she was going back to tell the distraught young woman sitting in her house. No doubt anything she told her about what we said would just mean that this wasn't the end of it. If I hadn't been so blindsided, I probably would have been more cautious about what I said about Emily.

* * *

When the door closed behind Judith, I turned back to Mulder. "How could you have thought that saying that we weren't 100% sure that Emily was dead was a good idea?" I snapped at him.

He shrugged. "It's true."

"It is NOT true," I insisted.

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "You've never had any doubts?" he asked mildly. "Never wondered where her body ended up? You buried a box full of sand, one with your cross on top of it all-" Until that moment I hadn't been sure he'd seen what I'd taken out of the casket. "-and you never wondered if that meant that she might be out there somewhere?"

All I wanted to do was insist that I had no doubts, but it was a lie. "Okay, I've had doubts. Terrible doubts that have left me feeling angry and helpless when I think about the possibility that someone might have taken my daughter away from me yet again," I admitted unhappily. "But that doesn't mean that there's even the slightest chance that Leigh is Emily."

"Why not?"

"Fifteen," I hissed. "If Emily had lived, she'd only be fifteen now and Leigh is in her twenties. How do you explain that?"

He gave me a long look. "The Kurts." Some of my indignation fell away as I stared at him. He shrugged again. "I saw those boys being grown in vats with my own eyes. If they could accelerate the growth of clones..."

I opened my mouth to protest, but shut it again without making a sound. That could explain how Leigh was eight years older than Emily would currently be given her year of birth. The thought of little Emily being suspended in liquid like the photos of the unfinished Kurt clones Mulder had shown me made me feel sick, but hadn't I wondered if something like that was possible ever since the day of Emily's funeral? Someone had taken my daughter's body, and although I had never been eager to dwell on what the purpose of that act might have been, it was impossible to banish the thoughts entirely.

"Maybe it won't even matter," Mulder said, looking at me over the baby's head. When she hadn't quieted, he'd put her on his shoulder to rub her back. "Maybe Leigh will let it all go, and our only problem will be lining up another babysitter."

"Did that girl look like she's inclined to drop this?" I demanded to know.

"Mom, Dad?" I hadn't realized how loud my voice had gotten until I looked over at the sound of Joey's question and saw him standing in the doorway rubbing his eyes. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, buddy," Mulder told him, getting up to lead him back to bed.

Being woke out of a sound sleep made my little boy grumpy and confused. "But I heard yelling."

"Nothing to worry about," Mulder assured him. He gently prodded him down the hallway. "Come on, back to bed. Autumn needs to go back to bed too."

"You're sure there's nothing to worry about?" Joey asked.

They got too far away for me to hear his father's reply. There was something to worry about. Good God was there ever something to worry about.

When Mulder came back alone a few minutes later I was slightly calmer. But as soon as he sat down I gave him a bleak look. "Do you really think that she's just going to let this go?"

He sighed and leaned back against his chair. "Honestly? No. If Judith went back to her house and got badgered into telling her what we said...she'll only be more sure that there's a possibility that we're the people she remembers from when she was small. Even if this is a complete coincidence." Straightening up, he asked, "The question is, what do we do to put her mind at ease?"

When I didn't say anything for a while, he quietly asked me, "Don't you think we should at least agree to a DNA test? If she wants to, I mean, not that we should suggest one. If everything is a complete coincidence, that would be the end of it, I think."

A big part of me wanted to scream that I didn't ever want to do another DNA test as long as I lived, but the more logical part of me being told it to be quiet. The tests were stressful, both of the ones I'd submitted to in the past had been, but they provided information that couldn't be gotten any other way. It didn't seem fair that I should have to subject myself to all of that for the sake of calming down a girl I barely knew, but I also knew he was right. It might be the only way to end all of it.

I slowly nodded, and then said, "If she wants to do a DNA test, if she insists on taking this craziness that far, I'll let them do a test. But if I do, we should do one against your DNA too."

He looked so astonished that I nearly laughed. I didn't, though. Couldn't. "Against mine too? Why-"

"Ellens air force base," I reminded him. "We still have no idea what they did to you all that time they held you while you were out of it, and it's not beyond imagining that-"

"They borrowed a cup of genetic material?" he asked dryly.

The irreverent thought that a cup was a pretty big brag floated through my mind, but I knew what he was getting at. "Exactly."

Shrugging, he said, "I can't exactly refuse without being a hypocrite, can I?"

Not really, I privately agreed.

* * *

The next morning found me shaky and overtired, which probably wasn't too surprising considering how little sleep I'd managed to get. Autumn had woken me up twice and I hadn't given into sleep easily to begin with. The third time she'd woken up hungry, I'd still been awake. I must've seemed pretty dazed breakfast, because if Joey remembered being woken up by our argument, he didn't say a word about it. Usually he'd of demanded a full report.

It almost came as a relief when the knock on the door came about an hour after the kids left for the bus; at least I wasn't going to be left hamstrung by nervous anticipation all day.

To my utter disappointment, it wasn't Leigh coming to finally clear the air. Instead Daniel stood there, giving me an awkward smile. "Do you have a few minutes to talk?"

"Of course," I said quickly, stepping back to let him in.

He scraped his feet on the mat, knocking the snow off his boots, and I waited for him to complain about the raised voices he'd no doubt heard the night before. Mulder and I had been the subject of noise complaints from neighbors before, but generally the noises had come about from gunfire or other ways of dealing with lethal assaults on our persons.

"Coffee?" I asked, prepared to give him a cup of Mulder's. He'd taken up the habit since we'd moved to Ballyguest, and I assumed it was related to the unending dampness and cold that far north.

"No thanks," Daniel tried to summon up a smile as we took seats at the table.

"If this is about last night-" I began to say, but I stopped abruptly when he clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

"I don't know what you mean," he admitted, unsurprisingly.

"Oh, it just got a bit noisy," I said, not planning to elaborate if he didn't ask questions. "So what did you want to talk about?"

His expression suddenly became quite grim, and I began to worry. "Liz brought Rhys to a doctor this week," he began, and I started to worry more. I knew that there was something wrong with the boy from even the short amount of time I'd spent with him. Was Daniel coming to me because there was something rare and deadly wrong with his son? I knew already that Judith had told some of our neighbors and other of her friends about my work, but I had been hoping that I'd never be in the position of being the only one who could help someone I knew. "And they did a bunch of tests, confirming what she told me she already suspected. I just hadn't wanted to believe it."

"What did the tests show?" I asked, keeping my tone as even as possible. I hoped it wasn't cancer, or something neurodegenerative, though if he was coping with either it did make his outbursts easier to understand.

Daniel looked away for a moment, then back at me. "He has Asperger's."

"Oh!" I probably sounded more shocked than that warranted, but I was so glad it wasn't something fatal. Though I knew it was something that Daniel was going to have to deal with long-term. No wonder he seemed down, getting a diagnosis like that wasn't pleasant. "I'm sorry to hear that." It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that there were a lot of good programs these days to deal with children who fell on the autism spectrum, but I'm sure that Rhys's doctor had gone into all of that.

"Liz keeps saying it could be worse, considering the other disorders on the spectrum are all more impairing, and the school system is already used to handling kids like him, but…" Daniel trailed off with a deep sigh.

He looked so glum that I reached over and patted his hand. "You shouldn't feel guilty for not being more grateful. You're not supposed to have to feel grateful that your kid's problems are 'only' as bad as they are."

"Thanks." He looked around, and for a moment I didn't understand why. But then he said "is it true that your husband has a degree in psychology?"

Judith, I thought. It made me very glad that very few of our cases had been written up in newspapers more respectable than the Lone Gunmen. Somehow, I really didn't like the idea of all of our neighbors, and new potential friends, knowing all about the X-Files.

Looking at Daniel I nodded. "Yes, but he's not practicing."

"I see," Daniel said glumly. "I suppose that means he doesn't know anybody he can recommend, then," he said, and I finally understood that he hadn't been expecting Mulder to help his son, just hoping he might know someone who could.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "It's possible that he might know somebody who can give a recommendation. He does do an awful lot of reading on the subject of psychology, even if he doesn't use it in his day-to-day life anymore."

This made Danielle seem a little bit happier. "Well, if he does know somebody, or know somebody who can recommend somebody good, I'd love to hear it."

Unfortunately, this made me realize that there was one vital piece of information that I didn't have. Trying to ask as gently as possible, I said, "It would help if you tell me where Liz and the kids live."

He looks startled. "Newburyport Massachusetts," he said. "She had family there, and after we got divorced…"

"Right. I will definitely ask Mulder about it."

"Thank you Dana," Daniel said, standing. "I'm sure this is a heavy subject for first thing in the morning, so I want to apologize for that."

"No problem," I said, watching him walk away. He had no idea how heavy is subject I had been prepared for. The only problem was, I was still going to have that conversation ahead of me now. That left me feeling as grim as he had looked earlier.


	8. Empathy

In the days that followed Leigh's outburst, I felt my surety that had all been a huge mistake eroded. Mostly because of my long ago dreams about Emily… At the time I'd merely ascribed them to a grief I had never been certain I was entitled to. But years later, while Mulder was gone, I had another series of dreams, ones equally vivid and horrific.

And when we'd unearthed Mulder, and I saw the scars on his face, it had nearly been impossible to deny that my dreams had meant something that time.

Days after his miraculous recovery, I left him long enough to visit my mother. I suppose I'd hoped that she would comfort me by telling me that sizable coincidences happened all the time, and I'd been so worried for him that dreaming of the way he was hurt was inevitable. Maybe she'd even tell me that we dreamed every night and of course I'd had other dreams that didn't match up to what had been done to him, and since they hadn't, they didn't feel significant enough to remember.

But that turned out to be more wishful thinking on my part because she's listen carefully before telling me the most of the women in her family had had something preternatural about them, something outside the confines of medical science, so was hardly surprising to her that I'd had prescient dreams myself.

At the time I'd been irritated by her declaration and had distanced myself from her for a couple of days, telling myself that it was due to Mulder needing me, and then had mostly forgotten about it. That was probably inevitable considering how much would be thrown at me over the next year. And by the time life lifted itself out of chaos, the conversation longer seemed remotely important.

But what if she had been right? When William was as small as Autumn, I'd seen him effect objects in a way that was scientifically impossible. If that had been in him (I still don't know what stopped it, I'm just glad it didn't recur, and that the shot that Spender had mistakenly given Joey hadn't hurt him) was it possible that the ability to dream of situations I was far removed from was in me?

And if it was possible that my dreams after Emily's death had been portends what did that mean for me now? Really, that's what kept me up at night.

* * *

In the end it took three days of walking on mental eggshells before Leigh returned. I had known that she would. Because if it had been me, I would have. Even if the odds were slim of getting the answers needed, I could understand needing to take that chance. I wouldn't have threatened a slimebag's manhood to get information about Joey's birth if I wasn't the sort of person who took that sort of chance too.

We were having breakfast, after the boys had left for the bus, when there was the unmistakable sound of a car stopping in our driveway. Before I could move Mulder put his coffee down and stood up so he could look out the window by the front door. He walked over to me and squeezed my shoulder. "I'll talk to her."

Looking up at him, I wanted to tell him that he didn't need to protect me like that. "Thank you."

I didn't need rescuing, but maybe Leigh did, from my inability to be calm about the whole crazy situation. I found myself grateful that it had been Daniel visiting the next morning, because days later I was still keyed up, so imagine how I would have reacted then.

Mulder just nodded, and only as he went to get the door did I realize he was aware that I'd hear everything said in the next room. I took that as an invitation to join them if I thought I could. Or should.

The door squeaked a little as he opened it. "Leigh, Aaron." I started a little, half surprised she'd brought her husband. I heard them come in, then Mulder said, "I guess the kids will have a sub today."

"It seemed for the best," Aaron said.

That was true. It was nice to see Aaron treat his own wife with the sort of compassion Mulder showed me.

Aaron spoke again. "We talked to Judith at length about that night." It hadn't escaped my notice that Judith had driven Leigh's car home, then Aaron had brought her back later that evening.

"We assumed you would," Mulder acknowledged calmly.

"So I'm sure you aren't surprised that what she relayed to us did little to put Leigh's concerns to rest."

"No, not at all."

"So…" Aaron paused, to gather his courage, I thought. "There really were unanswered questions surrounding your daughter's death?"

I waited for Mulder to correct him, to explain that Emily had been my child, not his.

"There were irregularities around her death, yes. We weren't allowed to bury her," Mulder told them.

Sitting there just out of sight, I wondered for the first time how Mulder had felt about Emily's death. At the time I'd been beyond grateful that he'd at first let me lean on him and then hadn't been one of the many people who had been alarmed by my need to throw myself into work in order to cope with my grief. But had he been grieving too, for her sake and not just for my pain? When I'd first found out that she was inexplicably mine, I'd immediately imagined a life with my daughter, raising her, and Mulder had been a part of those daydreams. Sometimes he'd been the fun uncle type who was pleased to see her when the nanny brought her to visit me at lunch, and sometimes he proposed and we raised Emily together, but no matter what I imagined him being some part of her life. Had he had that sort of thought too?

"I… I know I was sickly as a little child," Leigh spoke up for the first time, braver than me. "I saw doctors all the time. I hated being poked and prodded and told I was so good."

_Any sickly child would have that sort of memory_, I silently argued. I was sure I could get that sort of memory recall from Christian, Kevin Kryder, Richie Lupone, or a dozen other ill children I'd helped or treated through both the X-Files and my medical practice. What she'd said was hardly an argument that she was Emily.

"Look," Aaron said abruptly. "I know this all seems fantasy-based, but I'm not asking you to believe anything right now. I'm just asking you and your wife to keep an open mind about the possibility that this isn't just a massive misunderstanding. To agree that there are enough similarities-"

"To what?" Mulder asked, using the same mild tone that he had infuriated me with the night we'd spoken to Judith.

Aaron swallowed hard. "To justify further investigation."

"By what means?" Mulder asked evenly.

I expected Aaron to say a DNA test, but Leigh spoke again instead. "I just want my records looked at. A lawyer told me that I might need help compelling someone to give me access. Another interested party demanding answers to might help."

"Someone claiming to be a parent?"

"Someone looking for answers about what happened to their child," she replied back.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Mulder and I had been at odds because I needed answers that he hadn't. At the time I wondered how he could possibly be content with not knowing. But now I wondered if I had been a hypocrite then. Because I had been willing to let those questions about Emily go unasked. Now it was quite clear that we all picked and chose what sort of unknown we could live with.

I got to my feet, not quickly, and walked out into the living room. Leigh look surprised to see me, and Aaron relieved. Actually, when I looked closer, I realized that Leigh looked frightened, of me. Was she expecting me to begin to rant and rave like a crazy woman? Did I look like I was going to?

Mulder held out an arm, indicating that he would like me to sit next to him. As soon as I did, he pulled me close. I leaned on him, grateful for that. Maybe it was psychological, but it did feel like he was lending me his strength.

I didn't smile when I studied them. "Okay."

The look Aaron gave me was uncertain. "Okay?" I don't think he realized even then I could hear everything they had said.

"If Mulder and I can help you gain access to the adoption records, we will. I'm not sure how much we'll be able to bolster the argument for allowing you to see them, but okay."

Leigh looked astonished. And it sort of broke my heart. Had she come here fully expecting me to deny the favor? Had she been so sure that I would turn her away? Was she only there at all because Aaron insisted that she needed some sort of closure, even if that closure was me slamming a door in her face?

Aaron bound to his feet, reminding me of a puppy. "Thank you! This really means a lot to us." He turned to look at his young wife. "Doesn't it, Leigh?" he asked, prompting her like he might have one of his school children to say thank you to another teacher.

Leigh still looked dazed. "Oh yes, it means a lot."

Conversation fizzled to an end then, and we made vague promises to help in whatever way we could. As the door closed behind them, I found myself wondering which would be more painful: finding out that she was Emily, or finding out that she wasn't. Right then, I couldn't tell.

* * *

I thought I'd been keeping things together fairly well the rest of the day, at least until William took Mulder aside after dinner and asked "Dad, is Mom all right?" in what he probably thought was a whisper.

I wasn't the only one who heard them, because Joey looked up from his math homework and gave me a quick look. One glance from me, and he returned his eyes to his paper immediately, making me wonder what my expression looked like. Not pleasant, apparently.

Mulder put his hand on William's shoulder, and said "she's gotten some news that makes her unhappy, buddy. It has nothing to do with you, or your brother or sister, and it's not really something you need to worry about. But please try to be patient, okay?"

William looked relieved, and that made me feel bad. What had he thought I been upset about, considering that he and Joey had been so well behaved lately? "Okay" he said earnestly. "I will."

This, more than anything made me wish that we got answers as soon as possible. It was becoming even more obvious to me that I wasn't holding up under the strain nearly as well as I wished I was, and I wasn't really sure what I could do about that.

It had been quite a while since I had gone to therapy sessions, and I tended to think of it as what you did when things were really wrong (like when you thought you were dying), but I began to wonder if maybe I should look to see if there was somebody well-recommended in town.

Until something more happened with Leigh's search for answers, I promised myself that I would do the best I could to put the situation out of my mind because it had to be unhealthy to let it eat at me the way I had been the past few days.

* * *

We may have all wished for quick answers, but they were not to be. Leigh showed up at my house several days later, looking tearful. For a change, her upset wasn't because of anything Mulder or I had said or done, which left me the mental space to feel sympathetic.

Fortunately, the kids were playing outside, so I just ushered her in before they saw her and begin to ask questions. I'd been doing a better job keeping handle on my own emotions, but I'm sure that seeing a woman in that state would make them uncomfortable just then, being a reminder of my own emotional fragility of late.

"What's wrong?" I asked Leigh, going to the stove to retrieve the kettle I'd been heating for tea. I brought two teacups and two teabags to the table, fixing tea with milk and sugar for both of us without bothering to ask if she wanted any or how she did if she did.

Leigh held it in both hands like a small child, and seemed to be more comforted by the warmth of the cup than the contents. She did take a sip though before looking up at me. "They keep telling me that they can't show me my records."

I nodded, not surprised. "So you will need Mulder and me to put some pressure on them," I suggested.

"That was Aaron's idea, you know, not mine," she said, her tone begging to be believed.

"Okay," I said. It didn't actually surprise me that her husband had come up with the idea. She was more of a wreck than I was, so elaborate planning probably wasn't in her wheel house at the moment.

"But what if it's not," she asked, confusing me for a moment. "If you and your husband go there and ask questions, and they just… They just don't answer you either?"

I wanted to mention DNA tests, but held my tongue. Mulder and I had said that we wouldn't be the ones to bring it up. So I wasn't going to do it then without consulting him first. "We'll figure something out," I promised her, not really comfortable with how vague that sounded even to my own ears.

Leigh rubbed her eyes. "You shouldn't have to." She picked her cup up again. "I shouldn't have involved you in the first place. This whole freak out of mine, that's me. You shouldn't have to deal with the fact that I'm neurotic."

I sighed, and she cast me a worried look. Maybe she thought that she had really exasperated me then. "You're young, so maybe that means that you are still looking for ways to prove that you're an adult that can handle things all by herself. But it doesn't always work that way, Leigh. Sometimes, you have to lean on other people. This doesn't change, no matter how old you get.

"Aaron may not understand exactly what you're going through now," I told her patiently. "But I know what it is to need answers that are difficult to find on your own, the ones you need to ask for help for. There's no shame in that."

Maybe I expected her to nod and feel better, but I didn't expect for her to ask what she did immediately. "What sort of answers have you needed to look for?" she asked, a mild note of challenge in her tone.

Looking out the window at my two snowsuit clad children throwing snowballs at each other, I hesitated for a moment. It wasn't something that I brought up very often, not with strangers, but if there was any chance that Leigh was actually Emily… Then it was something she was going to need to know eventually. And if not, maybe I just needed to tell somebody. I could take my own advice about lessening burdened by asking other people to share it, there.

"I don't suppose Joey has told your husband or his classmates very much about his early childhood?" I asked.

She looked confused, which was a sure sign that Joey didn't talk about it much to anyone outside the family either. "No. Not that I'm aware of."

"While I don't really want to go into all the details now, Joey didn't always live with us."

"He didn't?" she asked, throwing me a startled look.

"No. Before William was born, Mulder and I did IVF. That's how we got Autumn too." She looked little alarmed, and I wondered why. Even if she was Emily, Jacoby was proof that my fertility problems weren't genetic. And though I might have been in a sharing mood, discussing my history of cancer wasn't something I was willing to put on the table. So, I went on. "William was almost six when we discovered that someone had managed to give one of our embryos to someone else. And that embryo became Joey."

"That's horrible!" Leigh exclaimed. I could tell that she was envisioning a lab mix up, and that was okay. I wasn't going to explain the consortium to her, not then. "But you got him back somehow?"

"We did," I said, wondering how much detail I should give about that. I decided to err on the side of vagueness. "Joey's other parents suffered a tragedy in their family. Long story short, it was discovered that Joey was our biological child, and we were able to get custody of him."

She had been listening attentively, but I think she got confused along the way about what did this had to do with my statement about needing answers, because all she said then was "oh."

Trying to drag the topic back on track, I went on to explain, "When we first learned about this, I was so hurt, even after things worked out in a way that allowed us to bring him home. I just couldn't understand how this could have happened, or get past it. How could some other couple have ended up with _my_ baby? Joey should have been William's twin in reality, not just what people are allowed to think for convenience's sake. Someone's actions robbed me of almost six years of my son's life. Maybe I should have been happy just to have him, but I couldn't just let it be. So I went looking for answers. It wasn't easy, but I felt I had to do it."

This had Leigh nodding, as if she could completely emphasize with that feeling. "Aaron keeps telling me that I should be happy that my life turned out better than people might have predicted when I was younger. That I should be content with my lot now. But he doesn't understand what it's like not to know important things about yourself. He's never had that problem himself."

Until that second, that I only wanted to help her get her answers because it was the Christian thing to do. You're supposed to help your fellow man whenever you can, even if it's a burden to yourself. But then? To hear her say that? I wanted those answers for her too.

"You're going to know, someday." I reached across the table and put my hand on hers. She looked a little bit surprised by this, but didn't flinch away. "We'll help you. It's important, even if Aaron doesn't understand that right now."

And that's about when she began to cry. Not in huge heartbroken whoops, but silent tears, the kind that make your shoulders shake a little. I didn't take my hand away, but I didn't know what else to do to make her feel better. Maybe she did feel better. Because she didn't look sad. She looked relieved.

"Thank you," she told me once she pulled herself together again.

Before we went to bed that night, Mulder and I had a plan about how we would speak to the adoption agency that placed Leigh with her parents.


End file.
